I am mildly obsessed with salad dressing and for the most part refuse to buy the store-bought stuff. The following is a recipe that I have tweaked and tweaked until it’s pretty much perfect. There is almost always a container of it sitting in our fridge. A perfect salad to go with this perfect dressing consists of romaine, spinach, red onion, roasted red peppers, homemade croutons, and perhaps some toasted pine nuts, if you can stand to pay for them.
CREAMY ITALIAN SALAD DRESSING
Ingredients
- 1 egg I usually buy jumbo ones.
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1/8 scant tsp unflavored gelatin This isn't completely necessary; don't use any more or the dressing will start resembling jello.
- 1/3 cup vinegar . Red wine vinegar gives a fairly mild taste; balsamic or sherry vinegar is stronger. Your choice
- 1 tablespoon sugar Which is not very much compared to what's in the store-bought stuff--take a look sometime at the labels of commercial dressing. 1 tablespoon is only 12 grams, and that's for the whole recipe. Many store-bought dressings have way more than that in just one serving.
- 1 tsp. dried Italian seasoning
- 2 cloves garlic, pressed, or 1/4 tsp. granulated garlic I actually prefer the granulated garlic for this type of recipe, as it gives a smoother product. I buy a high-quality toasted granulated garlic from a spice store.
- 1/2 tsp. freshly-ground pepper Which I don't really measure--just give it a good half-dozen or so grinds.
- 1/4 tsp. salt
- 3/4 cup olive oil
Instructions
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Sprinkle the gelatin over the lemon juice in a microwave-safe container, ideally the container you're going to use for the dressing. Let the gelatin soften briefly, then whisk in the egg with a fork and microwave on high for about 35 seconds. You want to get the temp to 160 degrees to kill any salmonella in the egg. (I use an instant-read thermometer to make sure it has gotten hot enough, although in reality it's very rare to get sick from a raw egg. It's more for my own peace of mind than out of any real danger that I go through this procedure, but I'd need to heat the liquid anyway to dissolve the gelatin.) If you find that the temp isn't up to 160 and you want to re-whisk, use a clean fork. You don't want your fork or whisk to have uncooked egg on it. Once you've done this a few times you'll know how much time you need for your particular microwave.
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After you've blended the egg/lemon juice/gelatin mixture add in the vinegar and other ingredients minus the oil. Then slowly pour in the olive oil and blend until completely emulsified; you can tell this has happened when the color becomes lighter and the dressing looks creamy. If you use a stick blender for the mixing you can just do this whole recipe in the container, but if you're using a blender or food processor you'll have to transfer the mixture to that and do the blending and then pour it into your storage container.
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Chill thoroughly; the dressing will thicken somewhat after chilling.