"SaladDressing" news and stories

In the world of leafy green salads and crisp vegetables, few things are as satisfying -- and simple -- as the one-two punch of oil and vinegar. But once you start adding extra flavors and emulsifying, it's just as easy to make a creamy dressing that's a perfect accompaniment to the fresh flavors of spring. It's even easier, in fact, because there is no tried and true ingredients ratio for the perfect dressing -- it's all a matter of preference and desire, be it for something thick and creamy, milky, or somewhere in between.

The nutty tang of crème fraîche forms the foundation of this dressing, though sour cream, yogurt, mayonnaise or even tofu can be used instead. We find that mixing one part mayonnaise with two parts crème fraîche achieves a crisp and pronounced balance of flavors.

When making salad dressings, ever wonder why oil and vinegar mix well in some cases and not in others? Find out how to make the perfect salad dressing with two simple ingredients, and maybe just a few more.

A good salad dressing is one that doesn't separate. When making salad dressing, some of us shake, some of us whisk, and no few of us cruet. All of these methods, though tried and true, work on some dressings, but at your local kitchen store you can get a gadget that works on all of them: the Bonjour Salad Chef. The Salad Chef is a hand-held blender consisting of a power unit with a touch button on the top, from which emerges a long stem with a set of high-impact plastic blades on the business end, which when engaged spin at extra-high speed to emulsify salad dressing.

Emuslification is a science-fair-sounding word that refers to the suspension of acid in oil. Creating it is a matter of technique: the oil and acid which you mixed in a ratio (approximately two-thirds oil to one-third acid) combine with flavorful ingredients to incorporate into a sauce which maintains its consistency. The only way to create emulsification is effort. For vinaigrettes, whisking is usually sufficient. For a heavy dressing, some shake ingredients together in a lidded jar -- adherents swear that this is the only way to make a creamy dressing such as blue cheese.

I promise I am not typing this from the copy on the box, but the Bonjour Salad Chef does its job perfectly. I have tried it on every kind of dressing I make: lemony washes for arugula, vinaigrettes from shallot to balsamic to pear, hearty olivata for Greek salad, burly Worchestershire dressing for Cobb salad, even red-wine dressing for beef salad. The Chef works best when the ingredients are placed in the bottom of a mid-sized bowl, and the Chef is lowered into them, whisking from the center outwards. Salad dressing should be fresh, but a dijon vinaigrette I made for this column held together six hours (refrigerated) before starting to separate.

As a bit of a veggie fiend, I eat a lot of salads. While I rarely change up the ingredients in the salad mix, I sometimes like to change up the dressing, because the same ol' vinaigrette or caesar dressing can get old after a while. One of the best and easiest flairs that I've found for salad dressing is mustard seeds.

After toasting them on a skillet, you just grind them up, like you see above, and add them into your dressing. The ground mustard seeds give a smoky depth to the dressing and brings a great added flavor to the dish. The seeds above were used as part of a great Mustard Seed Dressing recipe that I picked out of The Big Book of Backyard Cooking, and you can check it out after the jump.

I imagine that there are people in the world who eat Miracle Whip otherwise it wouldn't have so much coveted supermarket shelf space. But, what I want to know is: who? Who are the people that buy the Miracle Whip? 'Cuz, in my opinion, it's the most disgusting condiment ever created. It's even grosser than Kraft "Sandwich Spread" or green ketchup. It calls itself a "salad dressing," but I couldn't imagine glopping it on to a salad. (It almost makes me gag just thinking about it.)

Miracle Whip looks like mayonnaise, but it's so not. Upon close inspection, it is dotted with grains of paprika—that is one way to tell that it is not mayonnaise. The other way is to (blerf) taste it. It is tongue-meltingly tangy and overly cloying at the same time. Once you taste it, it is impossible to remove the after-taste from your mouth. It coats your tongue with its saccharine unpleasantness...blech. Totally heave-making. I just can't see how its overpowering sweetness would add anything to any dish in which it is used. But I know you Miracle Whip-lovers are out there. So tell me, why do you like it? And what do you eat it on...er, with?