Home made salad dressings

I am growing tired of my home made salad dressings and am looking for new suggestions? Usually low in fat!

In my restaurant, we make many of the salad dressings with a variety of vinegars, juices, and water to replace a lot of the oils. I recognize the desire from my customers to cut out excess fats. Herbs, vinegars, fruit juices and WATER are a great way to accomplish that.

[Nicko]

Thats really interesting Carol. What is an example of how you used water in a salad dressing. What would be an example of a dish you would used a water based vinaigrette on? I used to work with flavored waters on occassion, but never seemed to get a very robust flavor something I feel a vinaigrette really needs.

Incidentally I am reviewing a book right now for ChefTalk called Perfect Vinaigrettes (appetizers to desserts) by Linda Dannenberg which is really excellent. I am going to look through it some more and see if she has anything about using waters.

Great idea.

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Best Regards,

Nicko
nicko@cheftalk.com

I usually just cut way back on the oil and make sure the dressing is almost too intense as is. If you apply it sparingly, when you toss it, you usually end up with good flavor, not overwhelming, not too bland.

Well, for instance we make an Asian style dressing at the restaurant with Sushi gari. It's very intense, or sharp if you will, in it's pickling juice... The juice and other ingredients have a great flavor but need a bit of rounding... Water aids that without having to use to much oil.

[youla]

we also use the sushi gari and its pickling juice in some of our asian style dressings. another favourite of mine is to reduce mango juice by a third and complete the vinaaigrette with a good raspberry vinegar and then you wont need to use so much oil as the mango reduction is quite thick. you can use any fruit juice in this manner but I have found that the mango works best as it is quite thick to start with. My mother also makes a low fat yoghurt dressing using lowfat yoghurt and blending it with capers,dill,lemon juice and adding chives or whatever else takes her fancy...this goes well with potatoes, fish, cos, cucumber just experiment with other vegetables...she does!!