Caprese Salad
Ripe tomato, milky fresh mozzarella and basil brought together with olive oil and salt—nothing sweetened, reduced or drizzled over for decoration.
Jump to recipe- Prep
- 15 min
- Cook
- 0 min
- Total
- 35 min
- Serves
- 4
- Role
- Starter
Let five ingredients remain legible
Room-temperature tomatoes taste complete. Fragrance, acidity and sweetness are easier to perceive when the fruit is not refrigerator-cold.
Drained mozzarella keeps its milkiness. Removing surface brine protects the platter without squeezing moisture from the cheese.
Salt reaches the tomato directly. Seasoning before assembly gives the fruit time to make its own savory juice.
Drain, season, then compose
Drain the mozzarella
Set the mozzarella in a sieve for 15 minutes, then blot the surface gently. It should remain moist inside but should not release enough brine to flood the serving platter.
Cut for matching bites
Slice large tomatoes and the mozzarella about 1 cm thick; cut smaller tomatoes into wedges. Keep the tomato pieces broad enough to hold their shape and match each piece with a similar amount of cheese.
Season the tomatoes first
Arrange the tomatoes on a wide platter, season their cut surfaces with about three-quarters of the sea salt, and leave for 5 minutes. Keep the juice that gathers on the platter; it will mingle with the olive oil.
Layer and finish
Tuck the mozzarella and basil among the tomatoes without making a tall stack. Drizzle evenly with the olive oil, taste tomato and cheese together, and add the remaining salt only where needed. Serve promptly.
Choose ingredients that can stand alone
Tomato
Use fully ripe fruit with fragrance and enough firmness to hold a slice. Pale, hard tomatoes cannot be corrected with extra oil.
Mozzarella
It should taste fresh and milky. Blot only the outside; squeezing or prolonged draining makes the cheese needlessly dry.
Basil
Keep small leaves whole and tear large ones once. Add them near service so their edges stay fresh rather than blackened and wet.
Olive oil
Choose an extra-virgin oil you enjoy on its own. It should gloss the ingredients and join the tomato juice, not pool heavily.
No balsamic in the core recipe
Balsamic reduction is an optional addition in some recipes, but it changes the center of gravity toward sweetness and concentrated acidity. Serve it separately if desired; the core version here relies on ripe tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, basil, olive oil and salt.
Build a platter, not a tower
A low, slightly overlapping arrangement lets tomato juice and oil travel while keeping the soft cheese intact. Very tall stacks compress the mozzarella, hide uneven seasoning and make a simple salad awkward to eat.
A Capri name with unsettled origin stories
Caprese means “of Capri,” and the salad is firmly associated with Italian cooking and Campanian ingredients. Accounts naming a particular hotel, decade or inventor conflict, so this page does not turn any one story into established fact.
Research sources: Treccani: definition of caprese; La Cucina Italiana: ingredients and competing origin accounts.