The Vinaigrette
When Dan and I got married, dear friends gave us a wedding gift of a wooden salad bowl and tongs, as well as several favorite salad and vinaigrette recipes.
Eventually the tongs took on multiple uses, such as a drumstick for banging pots and pans when my boys were toddlers, and sadly, one day the tongs broke. But we still use that wooden bowl for delicious salads, which, at their very core, consist of fresh greens and a vinaigrette.
The basis for every vinaigrette is three parts oil mixed with one part acid. The acid is usually a vinegar but can also be a citrus juice. You can make any amount of dressing that you want and add all sorts of good stuff, but if you want the dressing to mix well and taste good, stick to an approximate 3:1 oil/acid ratio.
How to choose your oil and vinegar? 1) Whatever tastes best to you! 2) Whatever complements your salad toppings. Here’s what I choose from most often:
OILS
- olive
- avocado
- canola
- sesame (in combination with olive or canola)
VINEGARS/CITRUS
- balsamic vinegar
- red wine vinegar
- white wine vinegar
- unseasoned rice vinegar
- lemon juice
Combine your oil and vinegar in a jar or bottle, add a little sea salt and freshly ground pepper, and shake, shake, shake it! You’ve just made your own salad dressing.
If you want to get a little more creative, here are some of my favorite ingredients to add, NOT all in the same dressing.
ADDITIONS
- Perkins’ Good Earth Farm garlic, minced or crushed
- onion, shallots, or green onion, minced
- Dijon mustard
- fresh herbs
- dry mustard
- sesame seeds
- poppy seeds
- honey
If you’ve never made your own dressing before, please don’t let all these lists intimidate you! Think of them as tools for unleashing your creative culinary genius on your next salad. If you’d like specific recipes, here are a couple combinations I used in the past week.
For the single-serving salad I posted about on Monday, I made this:
Garlic Vinaigrette
- 1 T avocado oil
- 1 tsp red wine vinegar
- 1/4 tsp salt
- freshly ground pepper to taste
- one clove minced garlic
On Sunday I made a chopped spinach salad (8 oz spinach) with blue cheese, chopped Paula Red apples, and caramel corn. (Yes, caramel corn. What can I say–I ran out of pecans but had just opened a bag of Chicago style popcorn!) We’ll call this a honey mustard vinaigrette because syrup mustard just doesn’t quite sound right.
Honey Mustard Vinaigrette
- 1/4 olive oil
- 1 T white wine vinegar
- 1 tsp Dijon mustard
- 1 tsp Rogers Golden Syrup (I ran out of honey. Fortunately I had this cane syrup that, sadly, you can only purchase in Canada. Thanks to my parents and Canadian relatives for keeping me stocked in this deliciousness!)
- sea salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
Note: My 8-year-old Harper declared this salad delicious and a little sour–I took that as an okay to make it again this week. 🙂
If you don’t use all your vinaigrette at once, it can be stored in the fridge for a week or longer, depending on your ingredients. Make sure to shake it up again before using to mix together the oil and vinegar.
What’s your favorite vinaigrette?