Salads are an incredibly healthy way to spruce up any summer time meal. You get a host of nutritious vegetables with every bite. But, the tastiness of the salad really relies on having the best salad dressing.
Some people like their salads plain, and just prefer to taste the individual vegetables in their own splendor. Others will choose a general vinegar and oil to supplement their salad flavor. But, if you are like me, you want to make that salad taste mouth-watering, drenching, and super appetizing. Of course we all want to gain the nutritional value from each piece of broccoli or romaine lettuce, but we also want more- the perfect dressing.
Salad dressings are unique and varied. There are some basic flavors, and then you get a twist on that flavor. For example, instead of just a vinaigrette, you get red wine vinaigrette, or raspberry walnut vinaigrette, or balsamic vinaigrette. In general, you have your thousand island, your french, your honey mustard, the standard ranch, blue cheese, caesar dressing, and of course the vinaigrettes and italian dressings. These basic dressings give way to many diverse and varied options, some tasty and some not.
Dressings are also made by certain brands, such as Wishbone, Kraft, Newman’s, Ken’s, and the like. Then, there are specialty dressings and expensive dressings, and homemade dressings, and the combination goes on and on…
I have searched for my top ten recommended dressings. See if you agree with my choices…
1. The best dressing to me, is Ken’s Steakhouse French. This hands down wins the competition. I know many others who use it regularly and would agree. I find it on many grocery shelves, wherever I go, and in many households I visit. The dressing has a full flavor, is thick and creamy, and just tastes good on any salad and any type of greens.
2. Newman’s Own Light Honey Mustard. This has such a great flavor, but is also a light dressing. I don’t actually search for the light dressings, because I go for flavor first, but this has an added benefit. This dressing is somewhat sweet, but retains a true mustard flavor that makes the dressing delightful. The dressing has 60% less fat and 45% fewer calories than regular honey mustard dressing, but the taste is still full. The ingredients are all natural, and key ingredients include creole mustard, cider vinegar, vegetable oil and honey.
3.Lily’s Raspberry Walnut Vinaigrette. This is an awesome tasting dressing! It is somewhat sweet, and is thicker than many vinaigrettes, so it can really soak into the salad without making the lettuce wilt. This is a vintage dressing, and you can definitely taste the added care given to its flavoring. Although it is not considered a light dressing, it has only 5 grams of fat, one of saturated fat, and only 7 grams of sugar per serving.
4. New England Inn Recipes Vermont Honey French. Wow, do I love this. I find it especially tasty on baby greens or radicchio lettuce, rather than with standard iceburg lettuce. It has relatively few ingredients: Vegetable oil, corn syrup, vinegar, vermont honey, tomato paste, salt, spice, onion and garlic, to name most of them. The dressing itself has a hint of spicey flavor, but also sweet with the honey. It is another somewhat thick dressing.
5. Ken’s also wins with their Thousand Island dressing. This, to me, is the best thousand island dressing around. It is thick, and has a full thousand-island flavor, but it doesn’t have too strong of a relish taste. It is nice and creamy. Ingredients include chili sauce, vegetable oil, pickle relish, egg yolk and corn syrup, to name a few.
6.Kraft’s New Organic Raspberry Vinaigrette. Kraft only gains one spot in this list. In general, I don’t particularly care for the Kraft dressings, but prefer exclusive brands like the Lily’s or brands like Ken’s. But, this dressing surprised me, and I hope Kraft comes up with more like this in the future. This dressing is certified USDA organic. It has 0 grams of trans fat, and 0 mg of cholesterol. It is a thinner dressing, that pours more like an oil, over the salad. However, it still has a strong flavor and solid base. Main ingredients are organic cider vinegar, raspberry juice from concentrate, organic cane sugar, orgranic grape juice from concentrate, organic expeller pressed soybean oil, organic raspberries, and organic spice extract. Sounds pretty authentic to me!
7. I must admit, my colors show through when I pick another Raspberry Vinaigrette. You can surely see by now that this and French rank high on the flavor list for me. Ken’s Steakhouse Lite Raspberry Vinaigrette wins the number 7 spot in the countdown. This dressing is a thin dressing, like the Kraft in number 6, but it is somewhat translucent instead of solid like number 6. Distilled vinegar and water are the two main ingredients, along with vegetable oil and corn syrup. You can see the little pieces of spice and walnuts all through the dressing, which I like. It has a great vinegar-like raspberry flavor, and is the most traditional tasting vinaigrette of those listed here.
8. Wishbone Light Sweet n’ Spicy Frency. This is another dressing that goes well with the baby greens rather than on iceburg lettuce. It has a unique tang to it, giving it an original flavor. Some unique ingredients are brown sugar, worcestershire sauce, pimientos, onion powder, and molasses, along with the standard french dressing ingredients like tomato paste and corn syrup and vinegar.
9.Wishbone’s New Salad Spritzer Raspberry Bliss Vinaigrette. These little salad spritzers are nice and handy, and I would recommend any of the flavors. I just happen to be particular to anything raspberry. It has a light flavor and isn’t too heavy, so goes really nice with any summer salad of your choosing.
10. Wishbone’s Asian With Sesame and Ginger Vinaigrette dressing. I am really beginning to like the sesame/ginger dressings. This is the standard dressing used at Japanese Hibachi grill restaurants, such as Sakura, found in many states. Wishbone gives their own unique flavor to this one, and it’s one you have to try to fully appreciate.
I hope you try and enjoy all of these summer salad dressing choices. I know I have in the past and will continue to in the future. I had to buy all of these to retaste, just to make sure I made the right choices (nice excuse to buy alot of dressing, hmm?), so I’ve got plenty of salad dressing to last the whole summer and beyond!
