Balsamic Vinaigrette

I can’t remember the last time I bought salad dressing. Due to a 3/4 sized fridge (Only kind that fit in our former garden home and that I’m super stubborn about for some reason since I insist there is plenty of space in it to feed a family of five and I love it so with it’s bottom freezer…) I resent any condiment that takes up the limited door space due to a very simple reason: beer bottles only fits on the doors. I prefer beer to pre-packaged salad dressing. It’s a pretty damn easy equation, honestly.

Don’t mix this on a plate- but I’m thin on options from the Free Image library… Photo by Peter Fazekas  

Also, this dressing is the damn easiest thing I make and yet it’s one of my favorite. Ratios below are a standard ratio from those packages of salad dressings, but these days I usually just eyeball a smaller amount. But since I don’t have measurements on that… here ya go.

1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
2-3 Tbsp. water
1/3 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp. honey or tiny pinch of sugar
1-2 garlic cloves, pressed
generous salt and pepper to taste

I make this in a canning jar to make shaking it easy. Here’s the order to make blending nice and easy: Oil first… then everything else. The only one you want to really watch out for is if you put the honey in first it can get stuck on the bottom of the jar and not incorporate.

Please note- if you make a big batch and put it in the fridge overnight (which you’d need to do… because of the fresh garlic if you’re storing it) the olive oil will set up as a quasi solid and it’ll need to warm up on the counter and shake it up again before the next use. Due to said garlic it will continue to get a bit more “fresh garlic spicy” as time goes by… so I usually only make enough for a couple of days.

How do you use it? As a marinade, drizzled over rice and chicken, over salads… or over dressed greens. What are dressed greens, you say? LET ME TELL YOU!

Dressed Greens

OH MY GOD IS THIS THE BEST SALAD! Here’s how it goes: bowl (I wrote bowel first because of course I did) full of spring greens mix, drizzled with balsamic vinaigrette, and then tossed with your hands. Nothing else in it and it’s a god damn revelation is what it is! Our girls devour it, there is never any left over, and there is no slicing or dicing of other or any ingredients or any nonsense! It feels quasi middle eastern or southern European, and God please just try it. Two things- don’t mix ahead of time because it gets soggy and don’t save it- because it gets soggy.