I first had this delicious vinaigrette on a family trip to Disney World and came back determined to replicate the recipe!
You know, my mother is one of the best cooks around and certainly the best I have ever known. It’s no wonder, she was trained at the finest culinary school of all time, the elbow of her grandmothers. So when I can give her one of my recipes and have her, singing its praises (not to mention making it three times in one week) I feel like I’ve really accomplished something in my life.
Todays recipe is the one that did just that. This is one of my favorite salad dressings that I like to whip up and it’s so very easy to do (my other favorite salad dressing is Mama’s homemade Thousand Island, the link is at the bottom of this post). I gave this recipe to Southern Living to print in the October 2010 story they did on me and I was just tickled with the reviews it got there as well, so now its time for me to share it with you.
A lot of folks don’t make homemade salad dressing anymore because bottles of every shape and flavor are available at pretty good prices at the grocery store, but those bottled ones don’t hold a candle to homemade and you’re really going to be surprised at how easy this is!
Oh, about the rest of the post title…
Close your eyes for me and spell Vinaigrette. Seriously, could there be a harder word to spell? With a bachelor’s degree and English honors, I still have so many words that trip me up and I always get a good giggle at some of the simple ones that seem to present a persistent problem to my short circuited brain cell.
I’m gonna mention a few more throughout this post as they come to me and I’d love to hear the words that trip you up in the comments section on this post.
You’ll need: Cider Vinegar, Vegetable Oil (or your favorite oil), Dijon Mustard (honey dijon will do), Honey, Vidalia Onion (or other sweet onion), Salt, and Pepper. Necessity– Oh good grief this word is a hard one for me. I never know how many c’s and s’s to put in. Thank goodness for spell check.
In a sauce pot or skillet, place a tablespoon of oil over medium heat for a minute or so. Add chopped onion and cook, stirring often, over medium heat. Opinion: For years, I wanted to put an extra “p” in opinion. Even though I don’t do that now, every time I spell that word I stop and look at it to make sure I have it right.
Your onion will start to brown after a few minutes, keep stirring and cooking while it caramelizes and develops that yummy flavor. Souvenir – the mother of all messed up words. My definition of this word is “Cheap plastic junk that you buy out of compulsion while on vacation.” Now seriously, close your eyes and spell it for me. See how hard that is? If you got it right, you deserve an attaboy so here ya go “ATTABOY!”.
You want them to be nice and browned all over – but at this point I’m usually tired of fooling with it so this is good enough for me. I just love low maintenance recipes. Maintenance isn’t the easiest word to spell either, ya know.
Now pour your cider vinegar into the skillet. Oh, I forgot to warn ya about that vinegar facial you are about to get.. ~snickers~ Now I want you to take your spoon and just kinda rub all around on the bottom of your pot. Fancy folks call this “deglazing” the pan but we can just call it for what it is, rubbing the bottom of your pot to get the stuff up. The vinegar will clean off all of the wonderful caramel glaze on the bottom of the pot and pull all of that delicious flavor up to be used in your dressing.
I just called up Mama and asked her what words tripped her up the most. She said : worcestershire, jalapeno, occasionally and necessary.
Put all of that into a blender or food processor (grab whichever one is closest) and add our oil, salt, pepper, mustard, and honey. Put your lid on your blender (I like to state the obvious from time to time) and press that button! Whichever button you press depends on your mood. If you’re having a pretty good day, just hit “whip”. If you’re feeling a little tension in your life “pulse” might work better for you. If you need to work off a little stress before the kiddies get home, go straight to “liquify”.
Important: The trick is to let this just go to town in the blender for a few minutes, even though it will appear to be perfectly blended after just a few seconds. You want to form an emulsion here, which basically means you are whipping the ingredients to within an inch of their life, thereby causing them to be too frightened of your awesome blender-given power to separate too quickly. This will make your dressing nice and creamy and it will mostly stay that way.
After storing it in the fridge for a time, you will need to give it a good shake, though. This is why I like to store mine in mason jars because they are so handy to shake and keep around, taking up very little space in the fridge.
You can serve this over greens, with vegetables, or any salad combination of your choice.
YUM! Now thats some good eatin’!
Tell me what words trip you up in the comments!
Ingredients
- 3/4 Cup Vegetable or Light Olive oil or oil of your choice, note that other oils may alter flavor
- 1/2 Cup Vidalia onion chopped (or other sweet onion)
- 1/4 Cup Cider Vinegar
- 1/4 Cup Honey
- 1 Tablespoon Dijon Mustard honey dijon is fine
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon pepper
Instructions
- Place one tablespoon of oil in skillet or sauce pot and heat over medium. Add chopped onions and continue cooking, stirring frequently, over medium heat until browned and caramelized, about five minutes or so. Pour in cider vinegar and stir well to loosen coating on bottom of pan.
- Pour entire contents into blender and add remaining oil along with all other ingredients. Blend on high for two minutes, until well blended and emulsified. Refrigerate several hours before serving over your favorite salad. Recommendation: Dark greens with pecans, chopped apples, and dried cranberries.
Notes
This recipe featured in Meal Plan Monday and The Weekend Potluck
To get Mama’s Homemade Thousand Island Dressing recipe, please click here.
“Everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish by it’s ability to climb a tree,
it will spend it’s whole life believing it is stupid”
~Albert Einstein. To submit your quote, please click here to visit our Give A Penny page.
Yum 
Assignment. I always want to put an a next to the i for some blessed reason.
Ooh, that is a hard one!
Receive, deceive, receipt… All those “ei” words…always find myself repeating “I before E except after C unless you are from Germany (and I don’t know German so I don’t know why that last part would be helpful to me?!? ) Oh…and restaurant ( I know there’s a U in there someplace, but where do I put it?? ) and knowledgeable (I can never remember if there is an E or not?)
I so feel you on these. They are so confusing! and then when the I before E rule doesn’t work….
receive….always have to run that i before e except after c thingy thru my head when spelling..
That little thingy works for niece , also. That is one I have to stop and think about.
Oh delicious! I will make this and get back to you on it’s yumminess. I think I need to make myself a salad just like yours.
Hmm now as for tricky words it would be (okay I’m sorry about this!!!!) diarrhoea and hemorrhoids. And just to let you know my iPhone auto corrected the spelling. Haha
Hi Christy, love the dressing, and I agree that no one makes bottled dressing anymore, and how lazy is that, a few minutes and you got sooooo much better tasting stuff than that stuff filled with chemicals or my pet peeve canola oil, that stuff just took over, and I’m allergic. And I have diabetes, and one dressing (and it was an expensive natural, organic fresh you get the idea dressing) had at least 4 different tols (malitol,sorbitol) and a couple of the other names for various sugars and aspartame who needs to pay exhorbitant (there is a word for you) prices for supposedly (another word) pure organic dressing full of who knows what. I make my own dressings, I have a collection of glass bottles and jars saved from past tries at buying dressings and jams that I cleaned (my mother saved everything useable (another word) as a result of the 1930’s) and reuse for dressings, and storage for stuff.
Oh goodness, you’ve tapped into my heart with your post of old recipes, real ingredients, and then vintage containers!
Oh, Christy,thank you. This is my favorite dressing. I had no idea how easy it would be to make and with ingredients I always have on hand! I’m going to add a bit of freshly ground pepper when I make this! Blessings!
Christy – How long do each of the salad dressings keep in the fridge? For some reason I can never remember how to spell “suprise.” I always want to spell is “surprise.”
That’s because in the South we don’t pronounce the first R. 😉
I try to use the Thousand Island within three days and the Vinaigrette will be fine for four to five days.
Stephanie, you’re right; “surprise” IS spelled with that first “r.” Go get ’em!
“Liaison”. Why I need to use that word, with all its darn vowels, I dunno, but it seems to come up often enough that I struggle with it – but not often enough that I know it by heart!
Now that you’ve covered spelling, I’d love to hear you on punctuation. I’m giving a webinar next month called, “Your welcome. No, that’s my welcome: Fun with Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar”. Sound like fun? I think so.
Definitely – I have it written on a sticky note on the side of my computer. And even with that, I just misspelled it and had to correct it.
Convenient – Had to spell check it just to post it for ya 😀
Congratulations! I use to spell it “congradulations” based on my wrong pronounation of the word! Imagine my humilation when I found out I had misspelled it on many cards during the years!! Can’t wait to try this recipe and your Mom’s 1000 Island recipe too! Thanks so much!
Reunion. I always want to put the u after the n for some reason.
YES- Definitely is the one I struggle with the most too!
Can’t wait to try this dressing. It sounds like one my grandma used to make.
Vaccuum. Or vaccum. And obedient. I never vacuum obediently, that’s for sure!
I hate to say it but it the little words that get to me sometimes, I alway have to look at “their and brain”. I am in a never ending battle to switch the e and i in their and the a and i in brain.
Definitely is the one I avoid the most. I usually just substitute another word if I can’t get to a place to check it. Separate used to be hard util someone told me it has “a rat” in it.
My high school English teacher told us that very same thing in the night grade and now 15 years later I still remember that.
Personnel–two “n’s one “L”. never can get that right. The salad dressings ROCK!! (“Apologize” is a toughie as well.)
Can’t wait to make this dressing. Thanks for sharing!
I am a teacher for our local community college, but thankfully it is in the Visual Communication area and not English! After many years of participating in classroom spelling bees and serving as the go to person for spelling in my house, I have to admit that I still mess up quite often. My mistakes are usually those words that have another meaning but are pronounced the same, such as: quite and quiet. Another conundrum that makes me stop and think is the choice of “chose and choose”…these two really get my tractor cranking!
Reccommend, Oh I mean recommend always seems to trip me up–I have to look at it everytime to make sure I have it right.
Separate has always been tough, although maybe not so much now that I read Edna’s little trick for remembering it. The other biggie for me is sherrif or sheriff. It seems I must write it both ways to see which is correct. Since we have had an ongoing scandal in our sheriff’s department for about a year and a half, I’ve only had to spell that about a million times it seems.
Melody, I don’t know if this little bit will help, but it might. The origin of “sheriff” is British – from “shire reeve,” the fellow who enforced the local lord’s laws. From “shire reeve” to “sheriff” is a really short leap – and with only one “r.”
Broccoli. I always want to use one “c” and two “l”s! I looked it up actually before I wrote it on here!
tommorrow or tomorrow? I can’t ever rememeber 2 r’s or 2 m’s? I hate that one.
Andrea, you’re head “to” the “morrow;” tomorrow.
Aluminum!!!!! Had to get the reynolds wrap out to make sure I spelled it right!!LOL
Ok Christy, I’m glad I’m not alone…receive….I just backed up and retyped that one…..brain….I always want to type brian….council? I’m not even sure if that’s right now…..there are many more…maybe my brian is messed up! LOL
Susan, that’s probably because there are two similar words; council and counsel. “A council is meeting for discussion or advice, but to counsel is a verb meaning to give advice.” So you’re probably spelling one of them right, hmmm? 🙂
YUMMY! Can’t wait to make this for my sweet hubby!
Scheduled always trips me up for some reason. It just doesn’t look right! “Make sure you scheduled the check up so we can Crank our Tractor!” Keep up the good work! 🙂
Worcestershire……….(Had to go get the bottle from the refrigerator for this) Love the sauce, do not like to spell it! Heck, it’s hard enough to pronounce, much less spell! Still have a problem with Wednesday too.
Sue
Definitely is one I have trouble with. My husband loves Vidalia dressing so I definitely will be making him some as soon as the Vidalia onions get here.
I have trouble spelling “separate” – I want to spell it seperate. Also, I try to put a “d” in refrigerator (refridgerator), it just sounds right to me…
Can’t wait to try the Vidalia Honey Vinaigrette!
Stephanie, I think that you wanting to put that “d” into your refrigerator likely stems from the fact that if you’re just using the short form of the word–fridge–see? There’s your “d”! Confusing to add a letter to an abbreviation that isn’t in the long form of the word, isn’t it?
Worcestershire is a doozy for me to spell and pronounce!! Piece is another word that I have to mentally recite ” i before e except after c”.
Just printed the recipe out. Sounds wonderful! Saturday…I always want to put an e in place of the u. If I am writing a note and I am unsure I abbreviate (another misspelled word just fixed it with spell check).
Kernel (colonel)
Oh my goodness-there are so many…and, unfortunately, one of my biggest “pet peeves” is words that are not spelled right…like-receive (i always have to say “i before e except after c, too) Of course, just because it is a “pet peeve” of mine-does NOT guarantee that I will spell things the right way always… : )
LOL @SU for the diarrhea and hemorrhoids comment