Salad dressings:
In THE BATTLE OF THE SMOOTHIE, bananas won, with strawberries, mangos, pineapple and yogurt coming next in the poll on smoothie ingredients.
Now it's the turn of salad dressings to do battle. I'm only concerned with dressings for savoury salads and not for sweet salads like fruit or jelly/jello salads.
I'm drawing a line at chutneys/relishes, dips and jams/jellies - the poll is only concerned with what is drizzled on or tossed with a salad, though I accept some dressings are served as a side dish to a salad thus making the dip/dressing distinction fuzzy. But sometimes we have to live with fuzziness. Things aren't always easy to be placed in neat and discrete categories.
From my basic research, there are two types of salad dressings, vinaigrettes (ie oil-based dressings) and creamy dressings (eg mayonnaise, ranch dressing, thousand island dressing). I'm including all salad dressings, including those made with a combination of ingredients, in this poll. However, I'm including oils like olive oil in the poll as they are often used to dress a salad.
My most favourite salad dressings are balsamic vinaigrette, blue cheese dressing, French dressing, Italian dressing, Marie Rose sauce, mayonnaise, mustard dressing, pesto and thousand island dressing, with olive oil being the best salad dressing. There are two reasons why I'm voting for olive oil. One, it's healthy; those living on a Mediterranean diet live longer. And two, virgins are needed in making the best olive oil!
Extra virgin olive oil:
My least favourite salad dressings are barbecue sauce, cranberry sauce, miso sauce (disgusting!) and tomato sauce/ketchup, with salad cream being the worst salad dressing. Salad cream, especially Heinz's salad cream, is quite popular in Britain. It's a very synthetic salad dressing and tastes disgusting. Heinz salad cream contains, and I quote from the bottle, "Water, Spirit Vinegar, Rapeseed Oil (22%), Sugar, Cornflour, MUSTARD Powder, Pasteurised EGG yolks (3%), Salt, Colour - Riboflavin", the big letters used for mustard and egg denote the product's allergens!
What are your most and least favourite salad dressings?
Do you regularly make your own salad dressings?
I've never made my own salad dressing. Others, particularly restaurants and even food companies, are much better than me at making a salad dressing. By far the best salad dressing I've ever had was my Granny's (my Mum's mother's) home-made salad dressing. It was a mayonnaise but very sweet to taste; it was the star of the salad, usually a salmon salad. I'm not much of a salad fan but a dressing can make or break a salad, though no dressing can save a salad with celery in it! My other Granny (my Dad's mother) made the best horseradish sauce but that was always served with a roast beef dinner and never with a roast beef salad.
Below is a poll in which you can anonymously select your most favourite salad dressing.
Unfortunately only one pick is allowed in the poll. If you don't like salad dressings, please don't vote but please do comment even just to say you don't like salad dressings.
Because a poll on this site can only have a maximum of 20 answer options, unfortunately there was no room as poll options for: almond oil, avocado lime dressing, avocado ranch dressing, Baja-style dressing, barbecue sauce, boiled dressing, brown sauce, buttermilk dressing, cajun sauce, Catalina dressing, chaat masala sauce, chilli lime dressing, chilli/pepper dressing/sauce, coconut oil/sauce, cranberry sauce, eel sauce, gochujang vinaigrette, Greek dressing/vinaigrette, harissa sauce, honey dressing, horseradish sauce, Japanese carrot ginger dressing, Korean dressing/vinaigrette, lemon poppyseed dressing, lime dressing/juice, Louis dressing, mala sauce, Marie Rose sauce, Mayfair salad dressing, mint sauce, miso sauce, Moroccan vinaigrette, mustard and bacon dressing, peanut dressing/oil/sauce, peri peri sauce, pico de gallo, plum sauce, ponzu sauce, poppyseed dressing, raspberry vinaigrette, redcurrant sauce, romesco sauce, Russian dressing, Russian vinaigrette, salad cream, salbitxada sauce, sesame ginger dressing, sesame oil/sauce (including tahini), sesame soy vinaigrette, soy sauce (including soybean oil), spur salad and French fry dressing (aka pink sauce), srichacha, sweet chilli and lime dressing, sweet chilli sauce, syrup dressing (eg maple syrup dressing), tadka (aka tarka), tamarand lime dressing, teriyaki sauce, Thai dressing/vinaigrette, tomato ketchup/sauce, vinagrete (a Brazilian vinaigrette), vinegar, wafu dressing/vinaigrette (a Japanese dressing/vinaigrette) and Worcestershire sauce (aka Worcester sauce).
Hopefully I've covered all the popular salad dressings as poll options because I never want 'other' to win a poll because it means that the poll was badly designed.
I think this poll will be one big battle between mayonnaise, olive oil and ranch dressing, with olive oil just winning.
I want to thank @EnigmaInitiative for her help in compiling this poll. Obviously, any mistakes with the poll are my mistakes unless 'other' wins then it's the fault of my good friend!
Please see the first comment below to see what has won each battle of the food and drinks so far.
Heinz salad cream:
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