While eating whole foods is becoming much more integrated into our everyday lives the easiest meal to make from scratch for me is a salad. The term “Salad” encompasses so many dishes from leafy greens to cold pasta salads to fruit salads, though I’ll be focusing on the garden salad.
Dressed salad dates back to at least the Babylonians over two thousand years ago who used oil and vinegar over mixed greens. It wasn’t until the nineteenth century that the Garden Salad were popularized and adopted all over the world.
While the salad in todays culture has become a dressing transport system, the flavor of bottle dressings in general taste bland or non-natural to me and the list of ingredients can be staggering. When you make your own dressings the taste seems to “pop”. I’ll start you off with a base vinaigrette that is clean, fresh and tasty. Here’s what you’ll need.
Ingredients:
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/3 cup wine vinegar
salt and pepper (to taste)
half bunch green onion (optional)
1/2 tbs Dijon mustard (optional)
1/2 tbs Herbs (optional)
1 clove Garlic (optional)
up to 1 tbs Honey (optional)
Directions:
Combine ingredients except the green onion in food processor and turn on until an emulsion forms. Add onion and pulse until minced. Taste and adjusts vinegar and oil then serve.
It really doesn’t get much easier than this recipe. If the dressing taste to acidic for your liking you can add sugar, honey or any favorite sweetener. The mustard really helps keep an emulsion and adds a nice flavor. A favorite herb I like to use is rosemary in my dressings. It gives your salad a lot of body and adds great aromatics. That’s it! In under five minutes your making your own salad dressings that taste leaps and bounds better than shelved varieties and have no preservatives.
I’ll leave you with a link to 20 of the best salad recipes from Allrecipes.com. Enjoy.
I love to have a salad once or twice a week.