Make Your Own Salad Dressing

The main ingredient in Ken’s® Red Wine Vinegar & Olive Oil salad dressing is water. The second ingredient is vegetable oil. Olive oil and red wine vinegar are the third and fourth ingredients, respectively. Other highlights on the list are high fructose corn syrup, beet powder, and xantham gum. In theory, such a dressing should only contain red wine vinegar and olive oil. Luckily, all the salad bars on campus have bottles of vinegar and olive oil next to the processed dressings, and making your own salad flavorant is just about as easy as squeezing Ken’s® plastic bottle.

First, for constructing this dressing you’ll need a cup. I find that the tall plastic cups in the dining hall are far too large for such a small amount of dressing, so I suggest using the little plastic cups used for measuring waffle batter.

Once you have procured a container, pour in the vinegar, only as much as you want on your salad. The trick when making a salad dressing is the proportion of oil to vinegar. In order to get the proper balance of acidity, you should have three parts oil to two parts vinegar. If you have the little waffle batter cup, you can use the imprinted ridges to measure out each part, or just go by spoonfuls.

Next, walk over to the condiments and squeeze in a tiny bit of mustard—just a couple drops. If the dining hall has Dijon or spicy mustard, use it instead of plain old yellow. In the context of making a vinaigrette, mustard is an emulsifier, meaning it will hold the oil and vinegar together for longer.

Add a sprinkle of salt and pepper and stir up your new dressing with a fork, like you beat an egg—the spaces between the tines will allow the mixture to come together faster. Once everything is a uniform and light color, with no oil slick visible on the top, pour it over your salad. Remember that you don’t have to use all the dressing you make, put a little less than you think you’ll need on your salad—the dressing should enhance the veggies, not overpower them.