These 3 Dressings Will Upgrade Any Salad

I'm Adrienne Cheatham,

I'm a professional chef,

and today I'm gonna show you

how to make three salad dressings at home.

We're gonna be going over techniques that pros use

to whip up easy and delicious salad dressings.

This is Salad Dressing 101.

Today, we're making three basic dressings,

broken, emulsified, and creamy or mayonnaise-style base.

Once you have these basic ratios and techniques,

you can literally get as fancy as you want.

[soft guitar music]

Oil and vinegar make a vinaigrette.

So a broken vinaigrette

means that no matter how much you agitate them

and try to combine the two,

they will eventually separate in the container.

This is the ideal dressing for a simple salad

served along a simple dish

like a roast chicken or roasted vegetables

with a little side salad.

A basic broken vinaigrette

doesn't need anything, technically,

other than oil and vinegar.

So we are going to add some aromatics

just to take it up to the next level.

I like to use shallots or even red onion

because they don't add as much

of that sulfurous, kind of funky flavor to your vinaigrette.

Add some cold water to the jar to let these start soaking.

For this part, I don't need to measure anything

because the water will get poured off.

I'll probably let these soak for two to three minutes

just to really help dilute the flavor of the shallot.

The shallot has soaked for a little bit.

Now I'm just gonna pour the water off

and build my broken vinaigrette.

Back into the same jar.

The main thing to remember with vinaigrettes

is kind of the ratio.

For this broken, simple vinaigrette,

I'm using two parts oil to one part vinegar.

A lot of vinaigrette recipes that you'll see

will say three parts oil to one part vinegar.

For me, that is way too oily.

For the vinegar, I'm gonna use a quarter of a cup.

I'm using red wine vinegar,

but you can use any kind of vinegar that you want.

You could use any type of oil as well.

I prefer to use olive oil

or extra-virgin olive oil for my vinaigrette

So quarter cup of red wine vinegar,

half a cup of extra-virgin olive oil.

The only other things that vinaigrette need are seasoning.

For that, we're gonna use

a half a teaspoon of fine sea salt.

If you're using kosher salt,

start with the same amount.

Taste it, and if you need more,

just add a little more.

Black pepper, quarter of a teaspoon.

The other good thing about using shallots in here

is that the vinegar will kind of pickle them.

So after a couple days of sitting in the vinaigrette,

your shallots will have these nice pops

of like pickled onion kind of crunchiness in your salads.

So this is ready to go.

You can pop it in your fridge

and keep it for a couple weeks,

shake it up when you wanna use it,

or, you can go the extra mile

and add one more layer of flavor

to make your vinaigrette really special.

And that is to add some thyme.

I don't need to chop it,

I don't need to do anything else to it.

Just shake it up.

The essential oils from the herbs

will start to infuse in there.

You could also swap out thyme

for pretty much any herb that you want.

If you have dry herbs in your pantry,

add a couple pinches in here.

And this is how you make a broken vinaigrette.

So I have a nice light mescaline mix.

A little bit of salt and pepper really changes a salad

and helps bring out all the flavors of everything.

For a basic vinaigrette,

why not use a basic lettuce?

Now, broken vinaigrette,

you have to shake it and act quickly.

So as soon as I shake it,

I'm gonna drizzle, start tossing,

and get right on the plate

because it will really separate in real time.

Just a light drizzle

because a little bit really does go a long way

with the broken vinaigrette.

Mmh, that is the perfect amount of oil and vinegar.

Well balanced, really brings out the flavor of the lettuce

while keeping everything in your mouth

bright and fresh and ready for the next bite.

[soft guitar music]

We are gonna make a basic emulsified vinaigrette.

Emulsified means that the fat

and the liquid component,

in this case, vinegar,

are fully suspended and dispersed within each other.

So you're not getting separate oil and separate vinegar.

You're getting a homogenous mixture of oil and vinegar

fully emulsified that will not break.

You can take your broken vinaigrette

and make an emulsified vinaigrette out of that.

The only difference, really,

is that you're adding an agent

to keep them fully suspended together.

So if I'm eating something rich

or something fatty, something heavy,

I would want something

that's more of an emulsified vinaigrette.

First, I need to anchor my bowl.

There are a few different things

that are natural emulsifiers.

Dijon mustard is probably the most popular

and one of the most effective.

You have to start with the emulsifier

and then add your liquid.

I'm gonna add a half a teaspoon of salt

because everything needs salt.

Pepper, about a quarter teaspoon.

Garlic.

And you don't need to chop this by hand.

I just like to use a microplane.

A quarter cup of sherry vinegar.

I love the flavor of sherry vinegar.

It's a little earthy, a little funky.

But you could substitute any type of acid.

Lemon juice would work great.

Got my whisk.

I'm gonna make sure that the Dijon

is fully dissolved into the liquid.

And, for this, I'm using regular olive oil.

Straight extra-virgin olive oil can get really bitter.

In broken vinaigrette,

I like to do two parts fat to one part acid.

In the emulsified vinaigrette,

I like to bring it up on the fat to three parts.

The more fat that you add into an emulsified vinaigrette

will make it thicker.

I really want it to have enough viscosity

to coat the lettuce nice and evenly.

All right, let's do this.

So you wanna start getting the motion

and then slowly start to add your oil

because you really need to disperse that fat

into the mixture to get it stable.

Sometimes I use a blender for this,

or even a hand blender.

If you go too fast, it's just gonna stick together.

All these tiny droplets of oil will not separate.

They'll just come together

and stay together in the vinaigrette.

So keep whisking for a few seconds

after you finish adding the oil

just to make sure that everything is thoroughly combined.

So if you see here, it's not separating.

It's homogenous and one color from top to bottom.

That is thick enough to coat your lettuce beautifully.

And if it separates,

just use a blender and pour it slowly in

with another teaspoon of Dijon mustard in the bottom.

A little bit of salt and pepper.

Here I'm using sliced romaine

because romaine has a really high water content.

It's crispy, it's crunchy.

That'll help offset the punchiness

of the emulsified vinaigrette.

Hmm.

The emulsified vinaigrette coats the lettuce beautifully

and gives you an even amount of fat and acid

in every single bite.

The sherry vinegar gives it a little bit of sweetness,

and it gives you that punchiness

and a little bit of spice from the Dijon.

[soft guitar music]

The last dressing that I'm gonna show you how to make

is an emulsified in the style of mayonnaise.

The thing that makes mayonnaise different

from another type of emulsified vinaigrette

is that mayonnaise uses egg yolks as the emulsifier

instead of Dijon mustard.

So we're using egg yolks here

to hold our oil and our vinegar together.

I would love a creamy dressing

with something lean and light like fish

because it's gonna add some of that fat content

that I'm not getting

and help balance everything out.

I'm gonna start with about one small clove of garlic,

adding a half a teaspoon of whole black peppercorns.

Two egg yolks.

About a teaspoon of salt.

We're still sticking with a quarter of a cup of acid,

but half of that is gonna be lemon juice,

and the other half of that is gonna be apple cider vinegar.

The apple cider vinegar is gonna give us

a little bit of like funky, earthy, umami kind of flavor.

And the lemon juice is gonna give us

bright, floral acid flavors

to really liven up this creamy vinaigrette.

Now, some people are kind of weirded out

about using raw egg yolks.

If you're not comfortable,

buy pasteurized egg yolks and use that.

Just like making the emulsified vinaigrette

using Dijon mustard,

we're gonna get this going together first

before we start adding our oil.

For the oil in this recipe,

I'm using half a cup of neutral oil

and half a cup of extra-virgin olive oil.

I don't wanna use 100% extra-virgin olive oil

because it will get very bitter.

Partially because that the flavor profile.

So using a blender makes a really stable emulsion,

and it's creating these teeny tiny,

like microscopic globules of fat

to be dispersed within the liquid.

So you see how white and pale the yolks are already getting?

It looks like they're cooked.

Now I'm gonna start drizzling in the slowly.

Neutral oil.

One thing that you really wanna try to avoid doing

is jacking the speed up,

because if you go too fast,

it can kind of shock the emulsion

and make things break and separate.

So I have some parsley and some dill,

some of the tender stems and the leaves,

and I'm just gonna put these right in.

Roughly chopped.

And, again, I'm gonna make sure my speed is on low,

and I'm gonna start to let these herbs

just break down a little bit

and start to flavor the dressing

without becoming a full on puree.

[blender grinds]

Here, just a couple of seconds for that and we are done.

Oh my god, that is so pretty and it smells so good.

And that is how you make a creamy vinaigrette.

A little bit of salt and pepper.

This has a good amount of black pepper in it,

so I don't need too much.

This vinaigrette is thicker,

so I'm not just gonna pour it.

These greens are in the chicory family,

so everything has a little bit of bitterness,

a little bit more hearty flavor,

and they stand up to a thicker vinaigrette

because they have a more assertive flavor of their own.

I love endive and kind of bitter chicory greens.

Mmh, mmh, mmh.

That is so floral and so herby.

You're getting all that dill and all that parsley,

little bits of pepper.

Everything is so well balanced.

You get some brightness and acidity.

You also get earthy notes.

Like this is a meal in itself

or it can be served alongside something.

But, to me, a creamy dressing

with all this beautiful flavor and aromatics

is kind of the main event.

This is the kind of salad

that I would add a very light protein to,

like a poached or just simple chicken breast

and really just let it absorb all the flavors around it.

Another thing that I would do,

a little endive and just use it as a dip.

It's so versatile.

Making salad dressing at home is really easy.

You get to use up a ton of ingredients

that you already have in your pantry,

and you get to leave out all the unwanted additives

that are in store-bought, processed salad dressing.

Once you have the basic ratios and techniques

on how to make these different types

of salad dressings at home,

you can do anything your mind can come up with.

I'm oil.

I'm liquid.

We don't like each other.