Up your salad game with the fresh, sweet yet tangy dressing!
- 1 orange
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 1 tbsp honey
- salt and pepper
Zest and juice the orange. Don't be worried about some little bits of pulp, they will only make it yummier! Pop everything in a jar and shake really well. Taaadaaa!!! Salad dressing!!!!
You could use this on any salad combo that floats your boat, however, if you are looking for inspiration today I made Mum and I salad bowls with spinach leaves, grated carrot, grated apple, chicken, pearl barley, currants and chopped walnuts. Went splendidly with the dressing and the pearl barley made it super filling!
The Ramblings
I hate boring salad… I know plenty of people who love it and I don’t mean to knock it, but I would sooner starve than willingly eat iceberg lettuce, tomato, cucumber and mayo or italian dressing. I don’t find it filling enough and it just tastes like sadness. We often don’t have ‘fancy’ salad ingredients (ie, pinenuts, avocado, haloumi, feta, etc etc) because either they don’t sell them at home or I simply don’t have them on hand when I get the salad urge. To compensate, I love making creating dressings that are a little different and not packed with sugar and stuff like store-bought ones. Hence how this orange juice salad dressing came about today!
Mum was saying today how she ‘isn’t good at fun salads’ because unless she has seen some inspiration she struggles for the creatives of what to put in them. That got me thinking that there are probably a lot of people out there like that.
My Salad-osophy
To my way of thinking there is no right or wrong way to salad. Personally my formula is leaf + grain + meat + fillings + crunch + dressing = fun salad. So for example, today we had a bag of baby spinach in the fridge, leaf = tick! But other times I use different lettuce mixes or even things like brocolini if I’m feeling proper flash. Grain… Now a lot of people don’t worry about this part, and that’s cool, I’m just a hungry, hungry hippo who turns into a hangry, hangry hippo quite quickly if my salad doesn’t have some body to it. Today I found some pearl barley in Mums cupboard and cooked some of it up. However, other times I’ll use rice (brown is particularly yummy in salad) or quinoa if I can get my hands on some.
Meat is always just about whatever cold meat or leftovers I have in the fridge. Last night we had a roast chook, so today was a chicken salad kinda day. I use everything from taco mince to chopped up sausages, literally whatever is on hand. Fillings are pretty much the same, just use what you’ve got. By this point though, you’ll have a fair idea of the flavours in your salad and that might guide your fillings a bit. Ie, today I did carrot (cos it’s always good for bulking up), and I knew I was doing a fruity dressing so decided to pop some grated apple in too, to make it all make sense. If I am using something like taco mince though, I might go more along the salsa lines and do fillings such as tomato, cucumber, corn, avocado etc.
Crunch is where the ‘fun’ salad thing really ramps up. Today was all about currants and walnuts (again, I was in a fruity salad kind of mood so went with that). Depending on your salad though, think different nuts, bacon bits, fried haloumi, croutons, smooshed up corn chips, different seeds (sunflower are awesome!), fried noodles, the sky is the limit! For me, the crunch part is what makes me want to eat it.
Then the whole dressing business. Now to my way of thinking there are two categories of dressing, creamy or non-creamy. I won’t talk much on creamy because I rarely make them so not really my forte. In my mind there is a formula for non-creamy dressing too… Oil + tang + sweet + flavours = fun dressing. So I won’t go overboard on explaining this as its pretty obvious, but for today’s orange juice salad dressing my oil is obviously olive, my tang is the apple cider vinegar, my sweet is the honey, and my flavour is the orange juice. Then bung it in a jar and shake it off like T Swift. I play with different oils, different vinegar, worcestershire, soy, lemon juice etc. Sometimes honey, sometimes white or brown sugar, and a variety of different herbs and spices to create flavour. Just get creative and fret not about it!