Salads as a dish appeared two thousand years ago, in warm countries, where cooks had a lot of fresh herbs and vegetables. Initially, such snacks were seasoned with olive oil to soften the taste. But then sauces for salads began to multiply with an increase in recipes for these last dishes. But in the northern countries (alas, Russia applies to them), most people continue to use only a few gas stations. This mayonnaise, sour cream, vegetable oil or vinegar. But did you know that dressing is very important in salads? It is the sauce that emphasizes the taste of the dish and sometimes completely transforms it. Do not believe? Even if you only know how to cook olivier and Caesar, salad sauces will help you to serve a “new” dish to the table each time. But you need to know which gas station is suitable for what. In this article you will find an interesting selection of recipes for various dressings. They are grouped by type of salad, which it is appropriate to fill them with.
Universal dressings. Fragrant oil
As a rule, these sauces are the most ancient. Often they consist of one ingredient. This is a vegetable oil, sour cream, wine vinegar or lemon juice. Mayonnaise stands out, which, although it is considered a universal salad dressing, consists of several ingredients. Inventive humanity did not calm down, and began to invent various dressings based on these listed "simple" sauces. So there was aromatic oil for salads. In other countries, you can buy garlic, pepper, rosemary, basil and other types in the store. This universal dressing is good because it has already absorbed the entire aroma of dried herbs. And such homemade salad dressings are made very simple. You can prepare them for future use, with different tastes. Here is a recipe for basil oil. We put two stalks of dried basil in a clean and dry bottle. In addition, you can also pour a pinch of other herbs. But be sure to dried, because the juice of fresh plants will begin to ferment and spoil the entire product. We heat olive oil (it is possible also sunflower, but surely refined, flavourless) to forty degrees. As soon as the finger becomes hot, turn off the fire under the saucepan. Pour the oil into the bottle with herbs. Well cork. We put in a cool place. A week later, you can use it.
Mayonnaise
This is another versatile sauce. Almost all salads can be seasoned with them, including the favorite Olivier. There are a lot of salt and stabilizers in store mayonnaise. So it’s better to cook it yourself. The original recipe, invented in the French city of Mayon, gradually overgrown with numerous variations. This sauce is now prepared on eggs or without them, as well as on yolks. The whole secret of mayonnaise is to make vegetable oil turn into a suspension. Do you think that only factory units can do this? Let's make mayonnaise, a versatile salad dressing. At home, it is also cooked. True gourmets believe that the components for it should be whipped only by hand, with a whisk, because the blades of an electric mixer heat food and spoil the taste. But, in principle, a kitchen device (including a blender) will speed things up. Separate the yolk from the egg. Shake it. We start adding small portions of olive or sunflower oil. Beat until fat is completely dissolved in the egg. One egg will require 250 milliliters of vegetable oil. Gradually, the color and structure of the mass will begin to change. It will become thicker and yellower. Beat chilled protein with salt. Add to a thick sauce, achieving the desired consistency. At the end we add various spices (optionally lemon juice, mustard powder, pepper, etc.). And whisk again.
Aioli
You should know that mayonnaise itself is the basis for many sauces for salads. Mediterranean aioli is one of them. But mayonnaise is a universal sauce. They can be seasoned with both meat, fish, and light vegetable salads. Aioli, due to its fat content and rich garlic taste, is not suitable for all dishes. They decided to season meat salads, as well as snacks with pasta or boiled potatoes. Making it is very simple if you have a blender. In the bowl we lower five cloves of garlic, three yolks and a little salt. Whisk. We begin to add olive oil little by little until a thick suspension is obtained. At the end, add a little lemon juice. Whip again. According to gourmets, it was the aioli sauce that Lucien Olivier, who kept the inn in Moscow in the 19th century, used to charge his invention.
The vinaigrette
For a Russian, this word means a special kind of beet-based appetizer. But in French cuisine, vinaigrette is a classic salad dressing. Dressing is truly universal: they can be seasoned with both cold vegetable snacks and warm ones, using meat and fish. On the basis of vinaigrette, you can also cook more complex sauces. Let's look at a classic recipe. The name "wine-gre" itself consists of two words. Wine and fat (i.e. vegetable oil) are the two main ingredients of the sauce. We put in the bowl of the mixer two teaspoons of mustard (better Dijon), season with black ground pepper and a pinch of salt. Pour tablespoons of wine vinegar. Whisk. We begin to gradually add about a hundred milliliters of olive oil, without turning off the mixer. If you crumble feta (half a glass) into a ready-made vinaigrette and add dried parsley and oregano, you will get a Mediterranean dressing. If instead of wine vinegar you use balsamic, and at the end add lemon juice, you will get the Provencal dressing.
Sauce for Caesar salad at home. Classic recipe
This legendary appetizer was born on the border of Mexico and the United States in the last century. And it was not the main ingredients ( Romaine lettuce, wheat croutons and Parmesan cheese) that made it famous, but namely dressing. His secret is in a special way boiled eggs. They undergo minimal heat treatment. Boil water and turn off the heat. Put the egg right there. Measure out exactly 60 seconds. Remove the egg from hot water and let it rest at room temperature for about ten minutes. We’ll drive it into the mixer bowl. As you can see, the yolk remained completely moist. And the protein remained liquid, but ceased to be transparent. It was in this way that the cooked egg made the Caesar salad sauce famous. In an authentic recipe, everything was limited to this dressing. And Caesar salad was made like this. The flat dish was rubbed with garlic. Lettuce leaves were torn with his hands. They were sprayed with olive oil, lemon juice, watered with an egg. Parmesan was grated from above and sprinkled with croutons fried in butter.
Modern Caesar Salad Sauces
The appetizer gained worldwide popularity, and many restaurants included it in their menu. Many chefs decided to increase the "nutritional value" of the original salad, and began to include various nutritious ingredients in it. That is how Caesar appeared with boiled chicken breast. An appetizer with shrimp, smoked salmon or salted salmon was no less popular. There is even an option with fried bacon. The initial recipe for Caesar salad was also modified. Depending on what you will prepare the appetizer - with meat, fish or seafood - pick up and dressing. Here is an example cooking instruction. We break into the blender bowl an appropriately prepared egg. Add chopped clove of garlic, juice of one lemon, a teaspoon of Dijon mustard and four anchovies. Beat the mass. At the end, add a handful of grated Parmesan cheese. Too complicated sauce for Caesar salad is balanced by the fact that the appetizer itself is made elementary. Tear with your hands the leaves of Romaine, mix them with pieces of salmon or salmon. Watering with dressing. We spread crackers.
Fresh vegetable or herb based salad dressings
Are you used to flavoring snacks of this type with sour cream or mayonnaise? There are many other tasty dressings. As an example, take the sauce for the "Greek" salad. Every person has tried this appetizer at least once. Coarsely chopped tomatoes, rings of black olives, cubes of feta cheese. This set of products is best suited on the basis of Vinaigrette sauce. But we will use balsamic vinegar to add a spicy touch. Pour into a bowl with a quarter cup of this ingredient. Add two cloves of garlic, crushed or passed through a press, two teaspoons of brown cane sugar, a pinch of salt and black pepper. Beat with a whisk. We begin to add extra virgin olive oil in small portions. We constantly work with a whisk until a liquid suspension is formed. For refinement, you can add lemon juice or liquid honey with soy sauce in a ratio of 1 to 2.
Dressings for warm salads
In such an appetizer, one non-cooling ingredient, usually meat, is placed. Dressings should also be appropriate, such as to allow the dish to stay warm for a long time. Consider this type of dressing on the example of salad dressing with chicken. We make the classic “Vinaigrette”. The head of garlic is peeled from the top dirty scales or cleaned completely. In the latter case, spray with olive oil. Cut off the base of the head of garlic. Without taking apart the cloves, we wrap in foil and bake for about twenty minutes at 220 degrees. Expand. Mash the garlic with a fork, add to the vinaigrette along with three tablespoons of grated parmesan. Whip the whole mass again.
Chicken Breast Appetizers
Note that other universal dressings are suitable for a warm salad with chicken. This is the same mayonnaise or classic “Vinaigrette”. But tender diet chicken will also be ideally combined with Caesar salad sauce, Greek Tzatziki, Hungarian mixture of olive oil (70 ml), dark wine vinegar (3 tbsp.), Ketchup (4 tbsp.), cane sugar (1 tbsp.) and dry paprika (1 tsp.). Try also warm salads with Dijon sconce dressing. You need to beat three tablespoons of mustard with whole grains and white wine vinegar. Season with salt and pepper. Gradually pour half a glass of olive oil, whisking the mass with a whisk. Add a pinch of dried thyme at the end.
Rice or Pasta Salads
This appetizer in itself is very satisfying. But rice groats or boiled pasta need good “lubrication”. This type of appetizer is suitable for Caesar salad sauce, but lighter, based on natural yogurt. Eggs for such dressing can be boiled hard and finely chopped. Prepare a sauce called shallot for a salad of smoked mackerel, apples and pasta. In fact, this is the same vinaigrette, but wine vinegar is used there white, not red. And finely chopped shallots interfere with the dressing. Ideally, the surface of rice grains and pasta mayonnaise-based sauces. Here's a gas station called the Green Goddess. Add to the mixer bowl: half a glass of mayonnaise and sour cream; pulp of finely chopped avocado; a handful of chopped parsley; three feathers of a young ray; three anchovies. Pour a tablespoon of lemon juice, season with pepper, salt. Beat until smooth.
Herb Salads
Now in stores ready-made mixes of greens are sold. This includes lettuce leaves, arugula, basil, and other edible herbs. This assortment is ready to eat. But what to fill it with? Herb salad sauces are best made as light as the dish itself. Here is a typical recipe for such a mix. We mix kefir and cottage cheese in equal proportions. It can be feta cheese (then salt less salad), feta, mozzarella. Ordinary farm cottage cheese is also suitable. Mash the cheese well with a fork. Mix with kefir. Add finely chopped garlic clove, dry spices (oregano, savory).
Meat salads
In this case, dressings are suitable for us, the ingredients of which are tomatoes (both fresh, and in the form of tomato paste or ketchup) and pepper. If the appetizer contains pork or sausages, add spice to the dish with mustard and mayonnaise. On sale there are many sauces for salads with meat. This is the Ligurian pesto, which can be cooked at home by chopping green basil leaves, cloves of garlic and toasted nuts in a blender. Pitted black olives can also be included in this mixture. When the ingredients turn into a homogeneous mass, dilute it to the desired consistency with olive oil. Sauces are also suitable for meat snacks: Caucasian adjika, Mexican salsa, Hungarian paprika paste and others.
Instead of a conclusion
So we learned how to make salad sauces. Dressing recipes are very numerous, but do not treat them as a kind of dogma. You can change the ingredients or their proportions to your liking. Focus on what exactly you want to emphasize in the salad. Tenderness of spring radish of fresh cucumbers? Then season the salad with yogurt or kefir mixed with cottage cheese. Want to neutralize pork fat? Mustard will spice it up. Aioli will make any salad, even from plain greens, very satisfying.