Learning About Salad Dressing

If you want to add some greenery to your daily eating plan, you can’t beat salads; however, you may ruin all the health benefits of salad with store-bought salad dressing! Check the label of most of them, and you’ll see that they are just full of preservatives and chemicals that will counteract any good you might get out of eating a salad.

That’s why it’s a good idea to make your own, homemade salad dressing. That way you know what’s in it! You’re sure to find that it tastes better than dressing from a bottle, too. It’s easy to make salad dressing. You probably already have everything you need in your kitchen. Check and see if you have some lemon juice, sea salt, olive oil, apple cider vinegar and an assortment of herbs and spices. I’ll bet you do! Those are the basics.

You can also use added ingredients like nuts, seeds, and various crushed fruits and vegetables (like avocado) to make really fancy salad dressing. One thing about homemade salad dressing is that you need to use it up in a couple of days. With all fresh ingredients, it will spoil if you don’t. It’s not like commercial salad dressings that are so full of chemicals they’ll last in your fridge until the next millennium.

When you use fresh ingredients like lemon juice, avocados, and so on, you want to make just enough for a day or two. If you re just making an oil and vinegar type dressing flavored with dry herbs and spices, it will last longer, and you’ll actually want to make it a day ahead of time to let the flavors build. Understand that your own homemade dressings are not going to taste like the bottles of chemicals you are used to. It may take a bit of trial and error for you to adjust recipes to your liking. Start simple and add to your ideas as you become comfortable with creating dressings.

A good cookbook or online sources can give you recipe ideas. One good, simple dressing is 1 part olive oil, 2 parts lemon juice and sea salt to taste. This is good as a simple dressing on its own, and it can be a good base for lots of other dressings. Experiment with spices and herbs to determine what you like. If you want to intensify the flavor, you can gently heat the oil by setting the bottle into a bowl of hot water. Let the herbs steep, allow the oil to cool, then add the lemon juice and sea salt. Flavored vinegars make good ingredients for dressing. Just put the herbs and spices you want in a clean jar with some vinegar and allow the herbs and spices to infuse into the vinegar for several days.

This makes a good, flavorful dressing when mixed with olive oil. (Two parts vinegar/one part olive oil.) You can make all kinds of dressings on your own. You could make the old stand-bys that you find at the store, look up interesting recipes in cookbooks or online, or create your own. No matter what you do, it’s sure to be healthier and more fun than buying a bottle of store-bought salad dressing.

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