do you know what's IN that bottle?

[lagilman]

Seriously, have you looked at the ingredients list of a bottle of even "healthy" salad dressing recently?*

Challenge: to create a salad dressing that was as good as (or better than) what came from the offered bottle, made from ingredients a decently-stocked kitchen would have on-hand, and could be made in the time it took to take the salad out of the fridge and plate it.

Challenge accepted.

1 small bowl, 1 whisk or a fork.
honey
olive oil
white wine vinegar
Dijon mustard

Put a decent dose of olive oil into the bowl (approximately how much dressing you want, minus a spoonful). Add in a spoonful of honey, and an equal dab of mustard. Splash just a bit of vinegar. You can add a bit of lemon juice if you'd like - I used a lemon-flavored vinegar.

Whisk until it all blends. Use as desired.

Challenge: met.

This is why I haven't bought salad dressing in years. :-)

You can dress it up or down as you see fit - I personally don't add herbs, although I know some folk prefer it. Ditto salt.

As always, the quality of what you get is equal to the quality of what you put in. If you're only splurging on one thing, I'd say make it the mustard. Mediocre mustard is a very sad thing.

Also: if you see diced jicama in your supermarket? Grab it. One of the best additions to salad since ever, and worth the premium to have it ready-to-add.



* Stuff to give it a longer shelf-life while stored in warehouses, stuff to give it color (the honey alone will do that), chemicals to fight off other chemicals, and BTW, that "non-fat" stuff? Unless you're drinking your dressing, there's nowhere near enough fat in a salad dressing to really freak you out. And the drops of olive oil clinging to your greens will make you want to eat more.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/tesserae_/]

Yes, this, exactly. I've done my own dressing for years & have recently rediscovered good apple cider & pear cider vinegars are *wonderful* for salads. There's a fruitiness to them that's really nice, esp. if you put fruit instead of tomatoes into salads. And if you like blue cheese, whisking a little bit into a basic oil & vinegar is much tastier than the glop that comes out of a jar of "bleu cheese dressing."

[lagilman]

Or, instead of bleu, use Parmigiano and some fresh-cracked black pepper. Nom.