Learn to Make Salad Dressing Without a Recipe

In cooking school, you learn the French mother sauces: Veloute, Bechamel, Espangole, Hollandaise & Tomato. If I were to create a school of cooking, salad dressing would be my mother sauce. By learning how to make a good vinaigrette, you are well on your way to becoming an excellent cook.

Salad dressing is so simple you don’t need a recipe, but rather a formula (and it happens to be quite easy to remember).

If you can master salad dressings, it will carry over to all of your cooking.

One of the core principles you learn in cooking school is not relying on recipes, but on your senses. In particular, tasting everything you make, over and over again, with each change, until it’s finished. Professional chefs don’t expect to follow a recipe and have it come out perfectly just because they measured everything. They know that no two ingredients are ever the same, and therefore you can never truly make the same dish twice. The olive oil I used last week was from a different part of the orchard that gets less sun, and is therefore more bitter, which meant I needed to add some honey to my dressing. The citrus I used today was from Meyer lemons instead of Eureka lemons, and sweeter than the ones I used to make last weeks dressing. So I didn’t need to add extra sweetener. You get the idea…

Learning to make a good salad dressing is an opportunity to take your cooking skills from formulaic recipes (a brain exercise) to embodied execution (an exercise of using your senses and taste buds and refining). It’s easier to learn when you have a teacher helping you hone these skills, but it’s possible alone. To start, just make your salad dressing (and all food) with the assumption that adjustments will be needed.

There are four elements to every dressing: salt, fat, acid and sweetness. Everytime I make a dressing and taste it, I ask myself: Are the acid and fat in balance? Does it need more or less salt? A touch of sweetness? That’s it. By training your palate to recognize when these elements are out of balance, all of your cooking will radically shift.

Basic Salad Dressing Formula

1 part acid (vinegar, lemon or lime juice)

Optional, added seasonings (garlic, shallts, mustard)

3-4 parts oil (Avocado or Extra Virgin Olive Oil)

Sea Salt

Honey if needed

I use wide mouth mason jars & a hand blender to emulsify my dressings. If you don’t have a hand blender that’s fine, you’ll just need to shake your dressing again before serving.

1) Choose your acid. Apple cider vinegar, Mixed citrus juices or rice wine vinegar are good choices. Start by pouring 1/3 the total volume of dressing you want into the mason jar.

2) Add any additional seasonings. Let shallots or garlic sit in the acid & macerate for a few minutes, this will leach the bitterness out.

3) Choose your fat. Olive oil solidifies in the fridge, so if you are making a big batch to last several days, I’d use a combo of avocado and olive oils. Pour the amount of oil you think you’ll need into a liquid measuring cup vessel with a lip. The more acidic the acid, the higher ratio of oil in the dressing.

4) Add sea salt, less than you think you’ll need (it’s easier to add more than adjust for a too salty dressing)

5) Place the hand blender at the bottom of the mason jar, and while holding it, turn it on, while slowly, slowly, slowly pouring the oil into the jar. This is the hardest part as it requires coordination between both hands. If you pour the oil too fast the dressing won’t emulsify. This will happen as you learn, and it’s not a big deal. You’ll just need to shake the separated oil and vinegar together before you try it. The first part of engaging your senses is to listen and watch. The dressing will start to get thick as it emulsifies, and the sound of the blender changes. This is the first indication that the fat and acid are coming into balance.

6) Now taste. Are acid & fat in balance? How about the salt? Does it need a touch of sweetness? One trick is to taste it on a leaf of lettuce, to get a better idea of how the tossed salad will taste. I try not to add sweeteners to my food but sometimes a bit of honey is needed. Add what is missing, blend & taste again. In the event that you oversalt, you can add extra acid to compensate. Never assume-always taste.

That’s all —you are now on your way to becoming a salad dressing master. This skill takes time to develop, so pay attention when you are eating the salad. Is it insanely delicious or could it use a little more something? Undersalting is often the culprit in most lackluster food, because cooks add as much as they think they should, as opposed to as much as the dish actually needs to taste good. Use a good sea salt and don’t worry too much about quantity if you tend to undersalt things.

At my fictitious cooking school, salad dressing would be the first skill mastered because: 1) you eat more vegetables when they taste good, and 2) it’s the easiest way to learn the skill of flavor balance.

When you learn how to make a good salad dressing, all of your cooking will be elevated.