Solving the Salad Dressing Problem

What happened to our salad dressings?

I shop at a natural foods store. The store makes every effort to stock organic products, and their salad dressing aisle is no different. That's fine as far as it goes, but I still, for the life of me, cannot find more than a handful of dressings that are made without soybean oil--one of the big-8 allergens. And there are exactly zero made without the superfluous ingredient, xanthan gum. In addition, nearly all of them contain sugar or honey, and if you're trying to eliminate sugar from your diet, good luck finding a cooperative salad dressing in the grocery store.

Perhaps salad dressings have always contained questionable ingredients...I don't know, since I've only been studying ingredient labels for a fairly short time. And perhaps I shouldn't be so hard on the organic food manufactures-- they are, after all, manufacturing products for the masses...and why should I expect them to do any more than is absolutely necessary to satisfy the sensibilities of the majority of their customers, most of whom don't care about soybean oil or xanthan gum. And perhaps someone as persnickety as myself should stop whining and learn to make her own salad dressing. After all, chefs have been doing exactly that for probably ever.

It turns out that salad dressing is very easy to make, and there are a number of resources online with recipes. The recipe I selected for this post is a basic vinaigrette from the Mangia Bene Pasta website, because it has no sugar in it. (I'm trying to be good!) It calls for seven simple ingredients:

• Red or white wine vinegar
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Finely chopped herbs
• Minced garlic
• Dijon mustard (I used an organic spicy horseradish mustard)
• Salt
• Pepper 

The only tools you need are a bowl, a whisk and a jar to put the finished product in. If you have a mixer with a whisk attachment, it will make the mixing process much smoother and quicker. This recipe makes one cup of very delicious, xanthan gum free salad dressing in about twenty minutes -- start to finish -- at about half the cost of bottled dressing.  And, once you commit the recipe to memory, it will probably take even less time. (I'm sure I spent at least ten of those minutes reading the recipe over and over.) Also, when you make the dressing yourself, you can adjust the oil to vinegar ratio and saltiness to suit your tastes.

No, I didn't forget to write out the instructions. Since it's not my recipe, you'll have to go to the website (link above) and it will be the first recipe in the list.

In addition, I've included a few links below to get you started on your homemade salad dressing adventure...should you decide to embark.


Simple Bites (three recipes)
Oh She Glows (one recipe)
Recipe Lion (one recipe)
Mangia Bene Pasta (a bunch of recipes!)

I can't wait to try the avocado dressing!