Salad Dressing Basics

I’ve tinkered with the recipes a few times now and have found what works for me. The base of the dressing is a vinegar, an oil in the form of avocado and/or nuts, an optional sweetener (banana, dates), and water to achieve the desired consistency. The additions can vary pretty widely.

For some dressings, the vinegar/water measurements are: 1/2 cup vinegar, 1 cup water. When the mixture is thicker, then the measurements become: 1 cup vinegar, 2 cups water - especially if you have avocado, nuts, and banana in the recipe. Some vinegars may overwhelm the flavors if there’s more than a 1/2 cup. Lemon juice could be used instead of a vinegar as well.

In general the water is twice the vinegar.

Base:

1/2 cup Vinegar

1 cup Water

1/2 cup raw, unsalted Nuts (cashews, walnuts, etc) - optional

1 Avocado

1 Banana - optional

Equipment choices and preparation: If you have a Vita-Mix, food processor, or equivalent, then you can thoroughly blend in most ingredients. If you’re using a standard blender, some ingredients would work better with a little prep. Nuts may need to be soaked overnight to soften them for blending. Carrots will most likely make a chunkier dressing, but it’s not the end of the world. People often put carrots on salad. Onion, garlic, and harder veggies like carrots may need to be chopped before being added to the blender.

For the flavor profile, it depends on what you wish. I like to add zucchini and carrots to give it more depth of flavor and add more veggies to my day.

Zesty dressing:

1 peeled Zucchini

2 peeled Carrots

2 tsp chopped Garlic or 3-4 cloves Garlic

1/4 yellow Onion

1/2 tsp Salt

1/4 tsp Pepper

Mustard dressing:

(I’ve made this with Amy’s German mustard but not yet with the mustard seed)

4-5 tbl prepared Mustard or 1-2 tbl ground Mustard Seed

1 Banana (extra sweetener for the Honey Mustard idea)

Salt and Pepper to taste - optional

Balsamic dressing:

(contains sulfites)

For this dressing, I added nuts, avocado, and banana so the base had 1 cup Vinegar and 2 cups Water

2 tsp chopped Garlic or 3-4 cloves Garlic

Salt and Pepper to taste - optional

Fruit dressing:

(I haven’t tried this yet, but here are my thoughts of what this would look like)

5-6 oz Fruit - could be frozen or fresh

Banana or Apple to taste - depending on the sour/sweet aspect of the fruit

Salt and Pepper to taste - optional

Because the oil is also a thickener, these generally don’t separate. The fruit one might because some fruits like to do that.

These dressings last about 1 week.

Recipe Cheats - Beans

There is a balance between time, effort, and money in my recipes. Sometimes - to save time - I will use a 'cheat' that has already been prepared. There may be cheaper options that require more work and/or time.

Beans -
In the can or in an aseptic pack saves time. These have added salt.
Buying dry beans and cooking them ahead of time saves money. The salt content is under your control.

Lentils can be used instead of the beans. They are generally easier and less time-consuming to cook.

Vinegar

Sulfites are naturally occurring in grapes, which means they are naturally occurring in wine. Therefore they're in wine vinegars.

I like to use rice vinegar or apple cider vinegar.

Minimalist

What minimalist means in the context of these recipes:

Minimal - prep time, ingredients, and clean up

For example with the dark chocolate brownies:

The prep time is about 30 minutes.

Clean up is faster because of re-using equipment. The pot becomes the final mixing bowl. The 1 cup measure is used for all of the liquid ingredients. The 1/2 cup measure is for the dry ones. The parchment paper keeps the cookie sheets from getting dirty - though I still wash them afterwards, it's not a huge chore.

Instead of using baking chocolate and adding a sweetener, this uses pre-sweetened chocolate chips.

Vegan Milk

If the packaged vegan milks don’t work for you:

Soak nuts or seeds overnight (a couple of hours at least). What flavor you desire and what you need to avoid will play a role in your choice of nuts or seeds.

Some seeds have strong flavors, like sunflower seeds. If you wish to tone that down, blend an equal part of sunflower seeds (raw, shelled, unsalted) with something like pumpkin seeds (raw, unsalted).

Cashews and almonds will be on the sweeter side while something like walnuts will have a more earthy flavor. Filberts (hazelnuts) tend towards the bitter end of the flavor spectrum.

Blend 1 cup of water with 1 cup of your chosen seeds or nuts. Add a couple of pitted dates for sweetener and then strain it (nut milk bag or cheesecloth). Be prepared for your fingers to get cold and numb.

There are no preservatives in this so it won't last long - maybe a few days.

For some of these recipes, straining is not necessary as the seeds/nuts will just be part of the flour used.

I generally use unsweetened milks in these recipes as the sugars in other ingredients are enough for me. Sweetened milk is fine to use as well.

Gluten-Free Flour

I love to use almond meal, but this could easily be a nut-free flour like quinoa, brown rice or soy or a combination of any of these.

I don’t recommend the gluten-free flour mixes if you need to avoid sulfites.

You could also make your own coarse ground flour using seeds - I recommend grinding such wet things as seeds with some gluten-free rolled oats so that it sticks less.

Baking times and textures may vary with the flours used. Coarse ground is good enough for brownies and the like - adding whole seeds to them adds a nice texture.