Salad Dressing It Is Not Just A Meal, It’s A Style

Rightly said, “Dressing up well, can never go wrong” and this time I’m not referring to cloths but food and it is called Salad Dressing.

Sauces for salads are often called dressings. It’s a sauce which is used to make an entire salad even tastier. Salad dressings have a long and colourful history, dating back to ancient times. The Babylonians used oil and vinegar for dressing greens nearly 2,000 years ago. Egyptians favoured a salad dressed with oil, vinegar and Asian spices. Mayonnaise is said to have made its debut at a French Nobleman’s table over 200 years ago. Salads were favourites in the great courts of European Monarchs. Royal chefs often combined as many as 35 ingredients in one enormous salad bowl.

In the twentieth century Americans began using basic dressing ingredients (oil, vinegar or lemon juice, and spices) to create an infinite variety of dressings to complement salads.

Prepared dressings were largely unavailable until the turn of the century. Until then, home chefs had to start from scratch. Due to variations in ingredients, partly because of lacking storage conditions and year-round supply sources), results varied significantly. Gradually, restaurants began packaging and selling their consistent dressings product to customers, and the salad dressing industry began.

A dressing is an oil-in-water emulsion and generally consists of a combination of oil, water, vinegar, citric acid, salt, spices and an emulsifier. A thickening agent, like xanthan gum or carrageenan, is often added to the low-fat salad dressings.

Generally, I have curated these basic types of salad dressings.

• Vinaigrette, usually mixture or emulsion of salad oil and vinegar, often flavoured with herbs, spices, salt, pepper, sugar, and other ingredients.
• Creamy dressings, usually mayonnaise-based, which may also contain yogurt, sour cream, buttermilk, or milk.
• Cooked dressings, which resemble creamy dressings, are usually thickened by adding egg yolks and gently heating.

However, over the time the recipes have evolved into many different types and varieties that maintain old recipes as well as new and contemporary types of ingredients. Now a days more and more varieties of the low-fat dressing are produced then compared to traditional mayonnaise with a fat content of at least 75% recipe.

There are two main ways of producing the dressing although the ingredients and approach may vary from person to person-

• Spoon able salad dressing
• Liquid salad dressin

In general, liquid salad dressings have a low pH which is the reason they keep fresh longer than spoon able salad dressings.

With so many traditional and contemporary recipe of salad dressings on the go it is safe to say that certainly there is a salad dressing for all types of taste buds. Here is the list of Top Ten Salad Dressings From 2020;

• Ranch Dressing
• Caesar Dressing
• Buttermilk Dressing
• Elderberry Vinaigrette
• Bleu Cheese Dressing
• Balsamic Vinaigrettes
• Salsa
• Olive Oil
• Thousand Island Dressing
• Italian Dressing – both Creamy and Oil-Based versions of the dressing

You might want to try them and choose your favourite or add another recipe in the list for others to try. So, try experimenting and dressing up your salad this time the way you dress yourself.