The Best Burrata Caprese Salad | finding time for cooking

It’s caprese season!!! One of my quintessential summer food pleasures is a really good caprese salad, particularly when the tomatoes and basil are at their peak. But once you’ve have a burrata caprese salad, you realize you’ve been doing it all wrong with boring mozzarella!

What is burrata?? For the uninitiated, burrata is a soft cow’s milk cheese and from the outside it looks kind of like buffalo mozzarella. It’s made of mozzarella and cream, and has a smooth outer skin but then a creamy, slightly tangy middle. It is REVELATORY.

That tight ball of bland mozzarella will be gone forever once you’ve had burrata. It pairs wonderfully with things like tomatoes, peaches, and melon, and many people also put prosciutto crudo with it.

It’s bomb on a good Italian-style pizza or stirred into a pasta dish. You can learn more about it here.

One thing that’s critical—the simplicity of this dish means that you need to use the highest-quality ingredients you can find to make it amazing. In particular, using really good olive oil, flavorful tomatoes, and a good sea salt will make this great.

I’m obsessed with Brightland’s olive oils, and have used the Alive, Awake, and Arise (basil-infused) on this caprese salad…I highly recommend them!

Gently remove a ball of burrata from the liquid, let the excess liquid drip off, then place it in the middle of your plate. You don’t want it refrigerator-temp, but on its way toward room temp.

If you’re using cherry/grape tomatoes, cut them in half. If you’re using regular size tomatoes, cut them into slices of medium thickness. Layer or scatter the tomatoes in a ring around the burrata.

Chiffonade the basil and scatter it over the tomatoes and burrata. To chiffonade, I basically take the leaves, stack them on top of each other, tightly roll them into a tube (length-wise), and then cut the tube into little slices. It gives you little curly pieces of basil.

It’s like making cinnamon rolls, but with basil…

Drizzle a high-quality olive oil over the tomatoes and burrata. Then drizzle balsamic glaze (or a balsamic reduction, or just plain balsamic vinegar) over it.

If you can get your hands on Trader Joe’s balsamic glaze, it is the BOMB!

Sprinkle with a really good sea salt and grind black pepper over it. I have an amazing sea salt from Slovenia that I usually use, but also have these awesome Maldon sea salt flakes.

So…have I convinced you that you need a caprese salad with burrata in your life RIGHT NOW??? It’s seriously the summer side dish you need in your life!

Other easy & delicious side dishes you’ll love:

Simple Burrata Caprese Salad

Yield: 1 salad (1-2 servings)

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Total Time: 5 minutes

This burrata caprese salad is one of my absolute favorite (and easiest!) summer dishes...it's less a recipe and more an assembly. And using really high-quality ingredients makes all the difference--fresh flavorful tomatoes, a really good olive oil, and interesting sea salt make this a winner.

Ingredients

1 ball of good burrata
Grape tomatoes or 1-2 regular tomatoes
Fresh basil (usually 3-4 large leaves)
High-quality olive oil
Balsamic glaze (Trader Joe's is amazing); you can also use balsamic reduction or just balsamic vinegar
Good sea salt
Fresh-ground pepper

Instructions

Gently remove a ball of burrata from the liquid, let the excess liquid drip off, then place it in the middle of your plate. You don't want it refrigerator-temp, but on its way toward room temp.
If you're using cherry/grape tomatoes, cut them in half. If you're using regular size tomatoes, cut them into slices of medium thickness. Layer or scatter the tomatoes in a ring around the burrata.
Chiffonade the basil and scatter it over the tomatoes and burrata.
Drizzle a high-quality olive oil over the tomatoes and burrata. Then drizzle balsamic glaze (or a balsamic reduction, or just plain balsamic) over it.
Sprinkle with a really good sea salt and grind black pepper over it.

Notes

The simplicity of the dish means that you want to use the highest-quality ingredients to make it amazing. In particular, using really good olive oil, flavorful tomatoes, and a good sea salt.