Engineering no-oil salad dressings

[Fat Guy]

Over the years, I've been subjected to the occasional no-oil salad dressing from the supermarket. In my experience these are universally awful, with weird gummy textures and watery flavors.

At a friend's house recently -- this friend is a retired professional pastry chef -- we were served a salad with a creamy dressing that tasted of citrus, sesame and cumin. It was delicious. I asked our friend how she made it, and she rattled off a few ingredients: orange and lemon juices, sesame tahini, vinegar, salt, pepper, cumin. "And what kind of oil did you use?" I asked. "None," she said.

Now, this was not technically a no-oil dressing, because sesame tahini is not exactly a no-oil food. Still, this dressing was so luscious, so creamy, such a dead ringer for a rich, emulsified dressing, that it opened my eyes to some possibilities.

Has anybody had success making no-oil salad dressings?

[slkinsey]

I find that honey-mustard doesn't particularly need oil.

You allude to the problem with most no-oil dressings: It's not that people want no oil, they want no fat. Almost any other source of fat (any kind of nut or seed butter, avocado, etc.) will produce a nice no-oil dressing, but that's not the point. It's not clear to me that your friend's dressing was particularly low in fat or calories -- certainly no lower than it would have been if the tahini were replaced with oil.

[jdanton]

Yeah, in the dressing you referenced tahini takes the place of oil.

[Darienne]

Calipoutine (Randi) sent me a wonderful bean salad recipe this summer. I've never really liked bean salads, but this one is a real winner. The dressing has no fat. Lots of sugar. I cut down the sugar by one cup. Still I can't imagine putting it on a green salad...maybe a rice salad or a pasta salad??? But you asked for no fat, and here is no fat.

Sauce

3 cups white sugar

2 1/4 cups white vinegar

3/4 cup water

1 1/2 teaspoon salt

Boil sauce and cool 1/2 hour. Pour sauce over bean mixture and let stand 24 hours

[Alcuin]

I picked up a dressing without oil I think from Gourmet a few years ago. You take a lot of lemon juice and blend with even more Pecorino Romano and add a ton of fresh black pepper after you blend it. This dressing was designed to dress raw thinly sliced lacinato kale--the lemon juice breaks the kale down and the cheese adds richness. It's a good simple salad--I usually finish with a bit of good olive oil on top, but that's technically garnish not dressing, says me. Thickening with cheese might be a place to start exploring some uncharted territory.

[BeeZee]

Silken tofu can be blended in to a dressing to add a "creamy" body as well, with minimal fat. Added benefit of bringing some extra protein into the mix!

[isomer]

If you look here at cooks.com you will see that many of the low-calorie dressings are based on yogurt, cottage cheese, and low-fay mayonnaise for thickness and body. I haven't tried any of them, so I don't know how well they work, but it's an interesting idea...

[Sony]

This is something I adapted from Rachael Ray- cut jam, like apricot or seedless raspberry- with an accompanying acid. I like champagne vinegar with apricot, balsamic with raspberry.....

I think her recipe uses oil to more closely match a vinaigrette, but I forgot to whisk it in one day, and haven't looked back. While the oil does temper the sharp sweet-sour contrast of acid + jam, I was surprised at how little I missed it. But I guess it does follow the old trick- when you lower the fat, the compensation might just involve raising sugar!

Also, thinking along the lines of honey mustard, jam + mustard might be nice on some greens.....ought to give that a try sometime.

Of course, there's the whole creamy dressing route- while they often include some fat, they don't use oil (unless you add mayonnaise). Yogurt-based dressings are often my go-to, especially if I'm trying to use up a large container of plain low-fat yogurt.

[ruthcooks]

Liquid Pectin thickens any no-oil dressing nicely, but I've never used it straight 1 for 1. I substitute half oil, one quarter water and one quarter pectin to lighten the fat load, not eliminate it entirely.

[CaliPoutine]

Last night, I made Pam Anderson's caesar salad dressing. The dressing itself technically contains no oil, but before serving you drizzle the romaine hearts with EVOO. The dressing is basic, lots of lemon juice,lots of garlic( that is first made into an oil to use with the croutons), a dash of Lea and Perrins and some mayo( I used light). It was a nice change from the heavy caesar dressings that you see nowadays.

[heidih]

Liquid Pectin thickens any no-oil dressing nicely, but I've never used it straight 1 for 1. I substitute half oil, one quarter water and one quarter pectin to lighten the fat load, not eliminate it entirely.

Can you give a bit more detail on how the pectin would be incorporated; heat, when to add?

I have heard of using soaked chia seeds to give body to no oil dressings.

[Fat Guy]

You allude to the problem with most no-oil dressings: It's not that people want no oil, they want no fat. Almost any other source of fat (any kind of nut or seed butter, avocado, etc.) will produce a nice no-oil dressing, but that's not the point. It's not clear to me that your friend's dressing was particularly low in fat or calories -- certainly no lower than it would have been if the tahini were replaced with oil.

I agree that many people have an all-or-nothing mentality about fat in food. However, I don't think tahini and oil are equivalent. If you're looking at 1 tablespoon, at least according to a quick Google search I just did, tahini has 86 calories and 7.2 grams of fat. Olive oil has 120 calories and 14 grams of fat. In addition, my friend's salad dressing contained 4 tablespoons of tahini for a 16-ounce batch. This was enough to make a pretty great dressing that adhered well to salad and had a relatively silky texture. A 16-ounce batch of standard vinaigrette, for its part, could contain something like 12 tablespoons of olive oil. The quick math on that is 1440 calories/168 grams of fat for the standard vinaigrette and 344 calories/28.8 grams of fat for the tahini-citrus dressing, in a 16-ounce batch. It doesn't seem that, quantity-wise, any more of the tahini-citrus dressing is required to dress a salad. So that's a decent improvement in numbers, albeit not a zero-fat solution like the gummy supermarket dressings.

[Shalmanese]

A lot of asian and especially chinese salads involve no oil. They're used to dress sturdier vegetables though like cabbage, carrot, bean sprout, tofu & noodles. I think as you move away from leaf salads, the options for no-fat dressings increase.

[nakji]

Cucumbers, sliced, tossed and left to sit in a teaspoon of salt and a tablespoon of sugar for fifteen minutes. I pour the liquid off, and then dress them at the last minute with a bit of ginger juice and a splash of rice vinegar. This is the salad I put on the table most nights.

[slkinsey]

How do you get the ginger juice?

[nakji]

I have a Japanese porcelain ginger grater, which I picked up at the 100-yen store. You grate the ginger on the nubbly bits on top, and the juice pools along the side, which you can then pour off. I probably use about a half teaspoon to flavour my cucumbers. I imagine ginger juice procured by other means would work as well, though.

[Fat Guy]

In other applications, I've been getting what I'd describe as "ginger juice with a little pulp" by putting ginger through my Oxo garlic press. You need to have some hand strength to make it happen, but the results are useful. It never occurred to me to use this in a salad dressing, but I have to try it.

[Alcuin]

You can get ginger juice by grating with a microplane and squeezing the pulp. It's really surprising how much juice comes out of a tablespoon (or less) of pulp.

[heidih]

As I have drastically cut back oil in dressings I noticed another "secret ingredient"- water. It won't give you cling on tender leaves, but it dilutes the strong ingredients without detracting from their flavors. Think along the lines of Vietnamese Nuoc Mam Cham. I agree with others that sugar makes a difference. I often make a dressing with ginger flavored vinegar (ginger steeped in warm rice vinegar with some sugar), Dijon mustard, water, a hint of toasted sesame oil & a little splash of another more neutral oil, plus soy or fish sauce. After tasting it often needs either a squirt of Hoisin or a bit of marmalade (orange is nice). It is too flat without the oils when used on tender greens, but can go "oil free" with sturdy things like grated carrot, cabbage, and the like. I have also experimented with pureed beans which can form a creamy base for sturdy vegetables.

[David A. Goldfarb]

Often I like just a good vinegar and sea salt, maybe some freshly ground black pepper, and nothing else.

Edited September 30, 2009 by David A. Goldfarb (log)

[JAZ]

I've found that, as has been mentioned, Asian ingredients such as fish sauce or hoisin can help low- or non-oil dressings out a lot. I think it's the glutamates, which seem to me to give a richer, fuller mouthfeel to sauces and dressings that almost mimics oil. I've used nothing by lime, sugar and fish sauce for Thai-influenced salads, or hoisin in a rice vinegar and sesame dressing (like this one which I use with an Asian style cole slaw).

[jaynesb]

I've wondered about using the juice that collects in red peppers when you roast them. However, I haven't tried it yet. It's got a bit of body and the flavor from roasting the peppers.

Just a thought.

jayne

[Shalmanese]

Also, I know we've had this discussion before but the standard 3:1 or 4:1 oil:vinegar ratios recommended by most cookbooks taste ridiculously oily to me. I always make my dressings at a 1:1 or 1:1.5 ratio which seem far more in balance.

[baroness]

I'm happy to see that I am not the only one who likes far less oily dressings. In some cases, I'll up that to 1:2, 1:3 ............

[maggiethecat]

Yoghurt, acid, herbs and cheese. Infinitely variable and satisfying.