Classic favorites including French Vinaigrette, Italian, Balsamic and Honey Mustard, and a few personal favorites including my all time most-used Asian Sesame Dressing. All of these take minutes to make and keep for at least 2 weeks!
Salad Dressing Recipes – standby essentials!
Whether throwing together a quick side salad or making a meal-salad, having a salad dressing on standby is super handy. The “problem” is that most salad dressings can’t be kept for more than 2 – 3 days. Typically because they are either made with ingredients like fresh garlic and lemon juice that lose flavour and/or go off after a few days. But don’t dash off to the store for a bottle of salad dressing packed full of preservatives! It just so happens that there are a handful of great salad dressing recipes that can be kept for weeks. And these aren’t dressings that I’ve mucked around with to make them long lasting. These are the recipes as they are meant to be – they just happen to be free from fresh garlic, ginger, lemon/lime juice and other fresh ingredients that go off / lose flavour after a few days.
I’ve been wanting to post a bunch of salad dressing recipes for ages and ages. I just thought it was too blah to just post a single salad dressing recipe. Dinners! Desserts! Party food! So many more exciting recipes to share! So it seemed almost meant to be when David Jones, the best of the best department store here in Australia, asked me to create something to celebrate the launch of their new Fresh Prepared Produce line. When I worked in the city, I used to spend many lunch hours browsing the David Jones Food Hall. Gourmet foods, hard-to-find “I must try once” condiments, the highest quality produce, a cheese counter to die for, sausages that I want to have for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. While many other girls would spend their lunch hours browsing the designer stores in the shiny new Pitt Street Mall Westfield, gazing longingly at glittering dresses, the softest ever cashmere pashminas and sparkling stilettos, I would trawl the David Jones Food Hall. OK, I lie. I have a major shoe fetish. I used to gaze longingly at designer shoes on the way to the David Jones Food Hall. 😉
There are salads. Then there are salads. Have you ever noticed that posh restaurants quite often have very simple side salads on offer? Just a handful of the highest quality salads and a top notch simple dressing. It all comes down to the quality of the ingredients you use. Well! If you use one of David Jones’ salad mixes and one of these salad dressings, you can make your posh restaurant side-salad-fix in 60 seconds any night of the week. 🙂 Those salad leaves are crisp as crisp can be, they taste incredible – so fresh and flavoursome, are pre washed sparkly clean. Love the colours in this Sweet & Tangy mix. Christmas!!???
So today, I finally have an excuse to share a handful of my favourite ready-to-use dressings. Handful…being 8. Yes, eight. EIGHT. 🙂 Though all these dressings are made only with ingredients that don’t require refrigeration, I still keep them in the fridge. Just to be safe. Psst Standby dressings aren’t just for quick side salads. Like this gorgeous brown rice, shredded kale and broccoli and roasted pumpkin salad with the Pomegranate Dressing. Everybody say YUM!
Ready To Use Dressing Recipes
All of these salad dressing recipes keep for at least 2 weeks in the fridge. Fantastic standby to make a quick side salad or a more satisfying salad meal! I’ve create a separate post for each recipe so it’s easier to find later. 🙂 Italian Salad Dressing (left) – One of the all time favourite classics, made with dried herbs, garlic powder and parmesan cheese, the shelf life of this dressing is the shorter of 2 weeks or the parmesan cheese used. Don’t skip the parmesan! It really “makes” this. French Vinaigrette (right) – The eschalots in this are an essential flavouring! The good news is that it continues to soften and flavour the dressing for 2 weeks. Beyond this, the dressing doesn’t go bad but the eschalot flavour fades. This is a really stunning restaurant classic.
Honey Mustard Dressing (left) – Made with mustard, honey, vinegar and olive oil, this beautiful dressing lasts for 3 weeks without the flavour fading. The consistency of this dressing is gorgeous – thick and creamy. And it’s not super sweet, it’s tangy with a touch of sweet. Balsamic Vinaigrette (right) – The simplest of all dressings, one to know by heart. This one will last for up to 4 weeks, subject to the olive oil you use (see bottom of post re: olive oil shelf live).
Pomegranate Molasses Dressing (left) – A personal favourite, this is made with pomegranate molasses which has a syrupy consistency and is sweet and tangy. A classic Middle Eastern condiment that’s increasing in popularity throughout Western countries. Very sheik, vereeeee tasty! Great on leafy greens, roasted veg, beans, couscous, rice, quinoa. Asian Sesame Dressing (right) – Probably my all time most used dressing because it’s made with just soy sauce, sesame oil, white vinegar, olive oil and sugar, and you can eye ball the measurements. Great to use for leafy greens, shredded greens or chopped veggies. And sashimi salads!
Maple Dressing (left) – Made with maple syrup, this is a fabulous tangy dressing with a touch of sweet. I use it on everything – leafy greens, chopped salads and roasted vegetables. I’ve kept this for over 2 weeks but see no reason why it won’t last for longer. Extra perfect with roasted pumpkin and sweet potato! Poppyseed Dressing (right) – One of my favorites for summer! The poppyseeds aren’t just for aesthetics, they add a gorgeous nuttiness to the dressing that intensifies the longer the dressing is left to infuse. This keeps for 3 weeks, probably 4 but I haven’t tried that myself.
My kitchen has been a glorious vision this week. Mounds and mounds of greens, bottles and bottles of salad dressings. I ate salads for morning tea, lunch and dinner 3 days straight while I was preparing this post. Remember – 8 salad dressings. Eight. EIGHT!!!! EIGHT!!!! (Tested, photographed, filmed = 30+ batches) I realise that most people don’t need a recipe video for how to make dressings, so this isn’t a recipe video. It’s to give you a visual of how handy it is to have ready-to-use dressings on hand, and salad ideas. Who ever thought that this former finance gal would one day be swooning over how beautiful salads are?☺️
Watch how to make it
How long can you keep homemade salad dressing?
I thought it would be useful to pop in a section here with some general information about the shelf life of homemade salad dressings. Basically, the shelf life of the ingredients used in the dressing determines how long a dressing stays good. The two most common ingredients in dressings that go off / lose flavour are garlic and lemon juice. Fresh garlic is one of the things to watch out for – it can actually cause a nasty form of food poisoning called botulism. So please, be extra cautious with anything with raw garlic in it left in the fridge for more than a few days. Cooked and dried garlic is fine, and query store bought minced garlic because it’s been processed to extend the shelf life, but I don’t know if there is any consequence on shelf life once mixed with other ingredients. Lemon juice loses acidity and flavour pretty quickly – within 48 hours in my experience. And the same applies to lime juice and other juices used in dressings. So all the salad dressing recipes I have chosen are made with ingredients with a long shelf life. However, even these still need to be used within 3 weeks. The biggest factor is actually the olive oil. Good extra virigin olive oils should be consumed within 30 days after breaking the seal of the bottle because they start to lose flavour. This doesn’t apply as to normal olive oils used for cooking which don’t have as intense a flavour.
❤️TELL ME WHICH ONE YOU LOVE THE MOST!!!❤️
What’s are you go-to salad dressing recipes?? Do you make big batches so they’re ready to use on demand like I do? Tell me which of these appeals to you the most!! – Nagi xx
LIFE OF DOZER
Dozer is very, very lucky that it never snows in Sydney… 😂 Can you believe someone gifted this hat to me? To ME. Not to Dozer.
This post is brought to you in partnership with David Jones, celebrating the launch of the Preprepared Fresh Produce line. The crispest of the crisp greens, fresh chopped ready-to-roast vegetables, pre-shredded slaws. A life saver during the busy festive season! SaveSave
