Salad Dressings

[EclecticEater]

Just got through reading Mark Bittman's salad dressing recipes in the NY Times today, and emailed him the following:

Did you know that, if you combine two tblspns of a citrus juice and two tblspns of a rice vinegar, with half a tsp of salt, and add a tblspn or two of minced onion or shallot, and let it macerate for twenty minutes, and then add 1/3 cup of good olive oil, you will have a fantastic salad dressing? The minced onion macerating makes all the difference. Learned this from the Chez Panisse cookbook. Thought it might be something you want to share with readers. Try it, you'll love it.

[Mickey Blue]

If your able, it would be nice if you could post the text of some of the those recipes here.

[HillJ]

I've been using rice vinegar for salad dressings for years and prefer it over. Balsamic, cider, white have their uses too but rice vinegar is nice and light!

[FlavoursGal]

Omit the citrus juice, add some miso paste, and you've got a classic Japanese dressing, too.

[Karl S]

THe classic thing to do with raw onion is to rinse it a few times.

But the maceration of shallots in wine vinegar is a long-standing truc, long antedating Alice Waters.

[elise h]

Which citrus juice do you favor?

[EclecticEater]

I use lemon or lime or orange or even grapefruit. They all work well with the recipe I posted above and each gives you a different flavor. If you really get down to it, you can use Meyer lemons and ruby red grapefruit as alternatives.

Then you can start playing around with the vinegar, using the same proportions. Champagne vinegar, white balsamic, white wine vinegar, apple vinegar, and trying different combinations if you get bored, maybe finding one or two you really like and using that regularly.

I always use the same proportions, though, and find they get all kinds of compliments. And of course you can take the next step and add minced basil, dill, rosemary, sage and so on for even more flavors.