Homemade salad dressing can boost the nutrition and taste of a salad.
If you regularly top your salads with store-bought salad dressing, there's a good chance those salads aren't doing you as much good as you might think. Many store-bought salad dressings pack in the calories and are full of salt, sugar, preservatives and other ingredients of questionable value or portion. Making your own homemade salad dressings is simple and delicious, a great alternative to store-bought.
Types of Dressings
There are two main types of salad dressings: vinaigrettes and creamy dressings. Vinaigrettes feature a mix of oil and vinegar, typically in a ratio of three to four parts oil to one part vinegar. Creamy dressings use bases of mayonnaise, yogurt or buttermilk to produce richer, thicker dressings. Both dressings can be endlessly varied depending on your choice of oils, vinegars, creamy bases and flavorful ingredients.
Oils and Vinegars
Vinaigrettes typically rely on olive oil, although you may choose to incorporate smaller amounts of other oils, such as avocado, hazelnut or sesame. Nearly any type of vinegar is suitable for salad dressing. Experiment with options, such as apple cider, balsamic, red wine, champagne, rice or berry vinegars. An acidic alternative, like lemon or orange juice, may also be used to substitute for all or some of the vinegar. While vinegar is essential for vinaigrettes, it can also be a nice addition to a creamy dressing. To boost your dressing's nutrition, choose high-quality oils and vinegars.
Add-Ons
Beyond your oil, vinegar and creamy base, most salad dressings obtain much of their flavor from additional ingredients. Choose from such options as fresh or dried herbs, mustard, garlic, spices, cheese, bacon, chopped nuts, honey, sugar, anchovy paste, soy sauce, fish sauce or salt and pepper. While you can find plenty of salad dressing recipes in cookbooks and online, don't be shy about just throwing ingredients in a bowl and experimenting. Salad dressing production has few rules and you can make many delicious combinations just by varying your ingredients and tasting as you go.
Mixing Dressings
A small amount of dressing for an immediate meal can be made by simply whisking ingredients together in the bottom of your salad serving bowl. If you go through a lot of salad dressing, however, consider making larger amounts of several dressings at once; larger-scale production will optimize your time and minimize the temptation to turn to store-bought dressings by keeping your refrigerator stocked with plenty of homemade options. Larger batches of dressing can be mixed by whisking in a measuring cup or shaking in a tightly sealed jar.
Storage
Keep dressings in the refrigerator in tightly sealed containers. Old olive oil bottles or other glass jars make excellent storage containers. Depending on ingredients, your dressings may last for only a few days or, in the case of certain vinaigrettes, up to several weeks. Label each dressing with its production date to keep track of freshness.
Tags: salad dressing, salad dressings, dressing boost, oils vinegars, store-bought salad, tightly sealed
