Restaurant Style Italian Dressing.
There’s a reason your home-made Italian dressing is not as good as the savory stuff in your favorite red sauce place. Restaurant-style Italian dressing has two secrets, one in the ingredients and the other in the technique, and we reveal both of them below. Makes a little less than 3/4 c, enough for one huge salad or two mediums.
Ingredients:
½ c olive oil (extra virgin preferred but not required)
3 T red wine vinegar (use the cheap stuff, like Cora brand)
½ t Kosher salt
½ t sugar (!)
½ t dried oregano, crumbled with your fingertips
¼ t ground black pepper
Some of our favorite salad ingredients (not all red sauce-traditional) are arugula, cucumbers, feta and a crouton or two.
Method: mix dry ingredients in vinegar and allow to macerate several minutes (!) so oregano reconstitutes somewhat and salt and sugar are dissolved. Add oil and shake well. Keeps indefinitely but remember to shake well each time before dressing salad.
so simple….yet yummy…..and if you throw in some dijon…and then shake….makes a great dressing as well!!!
Agreed, but I was after the red sauce place dressing specifically. Leave out the sugar and oregano, switch white wine for red wine vinegar and add a T of dijon and you’ll have the favorite vinaigrette of The Department of Salad, the newsletter I wrote about awhile back.
I’ve made this twice so far and like it. It reminds me of a pizza/red sauce joint in Connecticut. I think they use a little more oregano and add some granulated garlic. Been enjoying trying to dial it in.
Just to add on to the modifications, a drop of mayo and some pecorino or parm mixed in is a nice variation too.
I like it, especially the idea of granulated garlic. Though some folks, who might be diners in a red sauce place, insist on avoiding garlic in any form. As to the mayo, I’m tracking a recipe for a creamy Italian served at the Lanzi family restaurants on the west end of Sacandauga Lake (Mayfield and environs) which has a mayo base.