Can everyone share their interesting salad dressing ideas? I'm bored to death with my vinegraittes made with olive oil, red wine vinegar or lemon and sometimes a little mustard or mayo.
if you like curry, try adding some sweet curry powder to your basic vinaigrette or if you like fruit you can add some basic fruit puree to it and you will end up with a fruity vinaigrette
since spring is in the air my tendency is whimsical and fruity.....
citrus(orange, lime) vinaigrette
passionfruit vinaigrette
ginger-lime-jalapeno
watermelon? bluberry? vinaigrette
jalapeno-raspberry
tangerine or blood orange vainaigrette
spicy asian
sesame ginger
lemon-mint
cucumber chipotle(yougurt)
chipotle balsamic
strawberry balsamic
spicy peanut
mediterranean tahini
lime cilantro
green chile vinaigrette
black olive and rosemary
prickly pear
i know that these are primarily vinaigrettes, but they truly are different and are perfect when paired with the right salad....perhaps changing up your whole salad would help with the boredom..instead of a garden salad maybe fresh and dried organic fruits and nuts...glazed, spiced, cranberries, fig pieces, dried or fresh strawberries or raspberries or blueberries etc.....just a thought
These sound great, I shall try them, I imagine the cold noodle salad would be good with the first dressing as well but alas, I'm going low carb these days and avoiding all noodles.
Tzatziki is great as a dressing or a dip. Here's my recipe.
greek yogurt (total)
english cucumber, grated
garlic, minced or grated
red wine vinegar
olive oil
salt
1. in a small colander place the grated cuke with a little salt and leave it for 15 min to release juice. press it to rid the juice.
2. mix with the ypgurt and garlic and stir in olive oil and vinegar. salt to taste.
Depending on what i serve it with I mix in a fresh herb. With lamb throw in mint. With pork or chicken throw in fresh thyme or fennel fronds. With seafood, dill. Quantities of ingredients are up to you.
i add fresh dill or mint and use lemon juice instead of red wine vinegar....i just love the sunshine that a squeeze of fresh lemon brings to it...to anything really....
kk,
farro is a grain(wheat) very nutty in flavor with a bit of a bite to it(firm). yes, it does carry near the same amount of carbs as rice or pasta, but it is a healthier choice and as in everything, it's all about the portions. you can find it in an italian deli which you have many of where you live or in stores like trader joe's. the brand i get is a roland product in 1 # bags.
as an aside to an earlier post, i mentioned to replace white sugar with brown sugar..just to clarify, i wasn't talking about 'brown' sugar, but sugar products that are brown, as in sugar in the raw, turbinado, agave syrup, honey
joey
oh shoot, i just realized i posted this in the wrong thread..it should be in the low carb thread...sorry, but i gotta scoot...will try and fix it later...oh yeah, it's a monday for sure!
also, something i'm sure you are aware of but can really add up quickly is the amount of carbs in drinks and juices...cranberry juice which i personally especially love with vodka on a hot day...heck, even on a cold day! a lot of the fancy schmancy new age designer drinks are loaded. some of them sound so good and healthy until you read the label. caveat emptor!
Ya’ know Joey, I think that’s what I liked so much about this one place I use to go to across the street from my office in Honolulu, the splash of lemon. Just that little bit of brightness and I think that they also used fresh dill, I’ll give it a go. KK’s basic recipe and then use lemon juice and dill. Good call ladies!
The asian cuisines offer some good choices as mentioned.
Vietnamese Nuoc Cham works well and has no oil. I'm quite fond of it cucumbers with some basil.
In the Chinese restaurants, there's a thin sweet/sour mayonnaise based dressing that is popular. It's not part of traditional Chinese cuisine but can be good in its own right. Usually the ingredients are mayo, pineapple juice, lemon juice, sugar, a little salt. But there are some interesting twists it could take with other citrus or citrus accented rice vinegar. I'm partial to some orange flavored rice vinegar when I can find it. I had a yellow tinged variety of this dressing with poppy seeds that was good too with a more orangey flavor than lemon/pineapple. I've not found exact ratios. I've been thinking something along the lines of simple syrup made with the rice vinegar instead of water and then work from there. I've seen some claims where it's done more in the vinaigrette style, beating in oil rather than mayo. Based on the behavior of the dressing at my local favorite Chinese place, I think they use some mayo.
Japan and Korea have some good dressings too, but I don't know the cuisine well enough to point you anywhere specific.
Last year I jumped into the world of rolling sushi. For the most part it was not all so pretty. I needed some wasabi to go with. The paste strait out of the tube blew some people's heads off. I tried Green Goddess strait out of the bottle. They spit that out. I mixed a tube of paste w/ a bottle of dressing (3:1 was just from tube/bottle ratio), and everyone loved it, Asian people included. Later I threw in the vinegar to thin it out for a salad and it went over well too. Personally, I can't stand the stuff, but I guess that's why restaurants have menus.
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