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It's so easy to pick up a bottle of Kraft salad dressing at the grocery store so why should you bother making it from scratch? Like so many other things I've written about on this blog, the quality of the ingredients you use makes a huge difference in the final taste of a dish. More important than knowing what's in the dressing, you know what's not in the dressing. By making it yourself you avoid the additives (chemicals) that go into most processed salad dressings.
7 ingredients, how many are on your bottle of Kraft?
Making salad dressing is extremely easy and you can easily adapt recipes to what you have on hand or what flavor you'd like to include in your dressing. Typical vinaigrette's follow a ratio of 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar but Michael Symon's Balsamic Vinegar recipe (p. 65) is 2 parts oil to 1 part vinegar because he prefers a more tart vinaigrette. He suggests adding the oil incrementally and tasting along the way until it has the right balance for your taste buds.
Slowly adding the oil
Making the dressing is as easy as mincing shallots & garlic, whisking them together with Dijon mustard, honey, and balsamic vinegar. Once they are combined, slowly pour olive oil into the mixture, mixing continuously while pouring, until
emulsified. That's all there is to it. Now you can use this delicious, healthy dressing to top salad, fish, chicken, or anything else that sounds good to you.
Fresh Spinach, Killbuck Valley Oyster Mushrooms, Mackenzie Creamery Goat Cheese, Toasted Pumpkin Seeds, topped with Balsamic Vinaigrette
Storing the Vinaigrette
Old honey bottles are a great way to store sauces & dressings. I also use honey bottles to store my homemade hot sauce and other sauces. One down side of making salad dressing from scratch is it doesn't have the shelf life that the stuff you buy at the grocery store does because everything is fresh and there are no preservatives. I recommend using it with in 2-3 weeks. Fortunately the recipe can easily be modified to make the amount you will use.
Like I mentioned earlier, this dressing recipe can easily be changed or added to depending on what you have on hand and what you want to serve it with. There are a couple other salad dressings in the book and I will make them, but I urge you just to experiment. Use this recipe as a guide and experiment with different flavors of oil and vinegar or try adding fresh herbs and spices.
What is your favorite salad dressing?
Cost
I will provide the approximate cost for each recipe in the book, as well as the source of the products used.
It cost about $4 to make 1 1/2 cups of balsamic vinegar dressing. You can use a cheaper olive oil or vinegar, but I don't recommend it. This is one of those recipes where you get what you pay for.
Olive Oil - $2 (Olive Tap)
Balsamic Vinegar - $1
Misc (shallot, garlic, Dijon mustard, honey, salt) - $1
Labels:
"live to cook",
"michael symon",
"Salad Dressing",
"Thumbs Up"
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