Dressings

Making salads a part of your diet is a great way to meet your daily nutrition targets and to cut down on your carbohydrate consumption. But salads don’t have to be boring! Add a tasty salad dressing on top of your salad and make it more interesting and delicious.

One of the main reasons why people find it so hard to eat healthily is because such food items might not taste as good as junk foods full of sugar, fat, and salt. Even when people take up the habit of consuming fewer carbs and including more leaves and vegetables in their daily routine, most of them relapse back to their old habits after a few months. People are not rabbits, and this is understandable. But salads can be tasty and healthy at the same time if you use a good salad dressing with it. Read this article to find out more about these sauces .

Different types of salad dressings for a dinner party

The great thing about salad dressings is that there are plenty of options for a person to choose from. Everyone will be able to find a flavour of salad dressing that they will like. Because there are hundreds of different salad sauces out there, it is not possible to list and describe every single one of them. However, here is a list of the four most popular types of salad sauces. Also, you will find a few tips that you can use to find a good dressing that will suit your taste. Having a better understanding of them will help you make better purchase decisions when you are shopping.

Italian dressing

Italian salad dressing is basically vinegar-based sauce. Most parts of this dressing consist of vinegar, lemon juice, water, and a sweetening agent. The sweetening agent can be sugar, corn syrup or honey. The benefit of using honey instead of sugar or corn syrup is that it can balance the acidity of lemon juice and vinegar. If you want to make your sauce thicker, then add vegetable oil to the mixture and emulsify it until it reaches a creamy consistency. The attractiveness of Italian salad dressing is its combination of sweet and sour elements.

Ranch dressing

This is a really versatile type of dressing that you can use for a variety of different uses. This salad is a combination of mayonnaise, buttermilk, garlic, pepper, salt and dashes a few other things. Therefore, it is not surprising that ranch sauce is really thick and creamy. However, there is more to it. One can use herbs to add extra flavour to this dressing. Herbs like parsley and dill can further diversify the taste of the dressing while mustard paste or seeds can really intensify the spiciness of it. Also, you can increase the heat of the dressing by adding pepper chillies.

Balsamic vinaigrette dressing

From the name itself you can tell that this dressing has its origins in rural Italy. The key ingredient of balsamic vinaigrette dressing is, of course, balsamic vinegar. Unlike regular vinegar, which is a clear liquid, balsamic vinegar is more concentrated and thicker. It has a really intense flavour, and you cannot use it as generously as regular vinegar. Even a little bit of balsamic vinegar can really influence the overall taste of the vinegar. Besides the vinegar itself, there will be olive oil, salt and pepper as well in this dressing.

Honey mustard dressing

This dressing combines the heat of the mustard sauce and the sweetness of honey. Therefore, it is not surprising that it is a really intense tasting dressing. The combination of the sharp taste of mustard and honey makes it suitable for both salads and also for meat-based foods. People use honey mustard salad sauce not only topping green salads but also for adding to hot dogs. Because both honey and mustard paste is brown and thick, the salad has a thicker consistency similar to that of Manuka honey.