In the mood for a spicy salad dressing? It’s easy to make one at home if you keep a few basic ingredients on hand. An oil, an acid and maybe a savory or sweet component are all you need to make a delicious dressing. Look at your available ingredients and decide in which direction to take your flavor profile.
Inspired by the last of the season’s sweet, colorful peppers, I decided to toss them together with some mixed greens, chopped red onion and browned ground turkey because that’s what was in my refrigerator. Another protein such as fish or some nuts would have worked just as well. How about some edamame? Hey, that sounds good, especially because this spicy salad dressing had an Asian influence. Get out your food processor, blender or mortar and pestle. Whichever is your favorite tool to smash some garlic and whisk some liquids together works for me.
Ingredients for Asian Influenced Spicy Salad Dressing:
- one clove garlic, minced
- pinch of salt
- 1 Tablespoon soy sauce
- juice of one lime
- 1 teaspoon sriracha sauce
- 1 teaspoon mirin
- 1 Tablespoon olive oil
- 2 drops sesame oil
What do we have here? An umami ingredient meets tangy, sweet and spicy. That’s the principle. Measurements are only a baseline to get you started because I want you to taste and adjust proportions according to what your palate prefers. I am not kidding about restraining yourself with the sesame oil though. It has a strong flavor and can quickly become overpowering. So start with a drop or two. You can always add more if you want to. That is why I keep this oil in the refrigerator. It takes me a while to go through it and I don’t want it going rancid. I blast through olive oil and grapeseed oil, so it can stay in the cupboard or on the countertop.
More on Substitutions
Basically, the above items are things I will always have on hand. If I didn’t have a fresh lime, I might have used a lemon or a vinegar of some kind instead. If I didn’t have mirin, I might have used some honey instead. Do these substitutions taste exactly the same? No, but that doesn’t really matter, as far as I’m concerned. What matters is that you learn to develop your intuition in the kitchen and cook with greater confidence using ingredients available to you. Learn to trust your palate as you experiment combining sweet, savory and spicy ingredients. Salad dressing can be made with an endless variety of items so long as it’s a pleasing consistency and complements the salad itself.
Instead of tender leafy greens, you could try a similar dressing with chopped or shredded cabbage. Keeping a head of cabbage in your refrigerator means you can shop less often and still eat fresh vegetables anytime. It’s delicious and nutritious cooked or raw and will keep much longer than other more perishable vegetables. Try this Amazing Zingy Unstuffed Cabbage Anytime.