Articles & News - Mastering Salad

In a piece I read in the New York Times, the criticizing author noted that the best way to mastering a salad (a sadly neglected dish of a meal) is to focus on what the French do: a solid vinaigrette. I would have to agree that we definitely have ruined the beauty of salad-making in America. Iceberg lettuce seems to serve as an appropriate base despite its lack of substance and nutrition (yes, I do have some weird hatred for it). A house salad is usually a toss of roughly chopped iceberg lettuce, dry sticks of carrot, and wimpy red cabbage doused in thick, fatty ranch dressing. Sound familiar? All too much.

So a quick run-through the article leads to some tips for mastering a salad by mastering vinaigrette. How interesting that it is easy enough to whip up. Give yourself some high quality ingredients of olive oil, wine vinegar, salt, and pepper to start. You can get a little creative after that but the basics lie in these main ingredients in the proper proportions. Make the salad leaves glisten, not drown. Give the article a read and let me know what you think about salads.

Reader questions: What do you dress your salads with? What do you think of American salads? Do you like vinaigrettes? Do you make your own salad dressings? Do you like to eat salads?

Original article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/02/dining/mastering-a-vinaigrette-dressing.html