See How Easily You Can Prepare a Homemade Caesar Dressing

The famous Caesar salad and dressing is believed by most historians to have been born in a kitchen with depleted supplies-Caesar Cardini's restaurant kitchen to be exact. A restaurateur in Tijuana, Mexico, Cardini was running short on ingredients one particular Fourth of July weekend in 1924. It was then that he gathered what was left of the basic ingredients, tossed them together in front of patrons at the tableside, and fathered the legendary Caesar salad. It gained popularity reaching even the Hollywood crowd, and from then on the Caesar salad and dressing has never left the world cuisine.

There has been multiple variations of the recipe for the Caesar dressing, but the main ingredients remain the same, more or less: olive oil, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, egg, and black pepper. If you've been to the salad dressings lane of grocery stores, you'll surely notice a lot of brands of bottled Caesar dressing, ready to be purchased and poured over your romaine lettuce and croutons. But why not avoid the MSG and other additives by being a home chef and making your own homemade Caesar dressing?

To put together your own homemade Caesar dressing, get a hold of the key ingredients: eggs, olive oil, black pepper, lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce, along with today's commonly added flavor enhancers for the Caesar dressing, such as anchovy fillets or paste, garlic, Dijon mustard and salt. Some even mix in red wine vinegar. If you use anchovy fillets and garlic, mash them with salt in a bowl, then beat the mixture with egg yolks, pepper and mustard until creamy. Stir in lemon juice. To make sure your dressing is emulsified well, add the olive oil into the bowl very slowly, drop by drop, whisking constantly. As the mixture begins to thicken, you can gradually pour in the oil in a slow, steady stream. Continue to beat the dressing until it reaches a thick and creamy consistency.

Plain yogurt also makes an excellent base for homemade Caesar dressing. Simply add plain yogurt and red wine vinegar to the recipe above for a tasty, creamy and healthy version of this classic dressing. Caesar dressing is typically used on salads topped with croutons, parmesan cheese, shrimp and chicken but it can also be applied as a glaze to chicken or fish when grilling. The pepper and anchovies create a sensational flavor for your white meats that is sure to please even the pickiest of pallets. This is an excellent idea for any leftover dressing that you have.

The Caesar salad and dressing has come a long way from its humble beginnings. Learning to make your own homemade Caesar dressing can be an invaluable kitchen skill, because today its popularity wouldn't make anyone think it was once just a combination of left-over ingredients in a busy restaurant kitchen one Fourth of July weekend.

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Chivry Green Dressing Versus the Emerald Goddess

The Chivry group's green salad dressing is really my dad's adjustment of an old recipe from a Swiss chef friend of ours. It's really a very simple method of utilizing many of the left over scraps from the kitchen with some fresh herbs from the garden thrown in. Salad dressings need to taste good, but they also need to fit in with the overall menu to limit too many extra ingredients. Parsley stems, celery ends, onion ends are all examples of kitchen scraps incorporated in the dressing.

Not content to support the things as they are, I whipped up a similar salad dressing with some very definite alterations. I titled this offshoot of Chivry group's green dressing the somewhat humorous (in my mind anyway) title of Emerald Goddess salad dressing. Of course this recipe is merely the jumping off point because I rarely make the salad dressing the same way twice. I tend to have fun with whatever spices and herbs jump out at me.

Basil and parsley are important, but the real basis of Chivry group's green salad dressing is the onion and the garlic where the Emerald Goddess is an onion-celery twist on the recipe. I add avocado and apple cider vinegar to my dressing (and sometimes an egg if I am feeling it). Although the present recipe abstains from the using Maggi, it is probably because I didn't have a bottle in the kitchen when I was filming it.

The Chivry green dressing is not only a crowd pleaser, it is simple to make and somewhat inexpensive (the fresh herbs bump the cost up...Maggi itself is not too cheap, but a bottle lasts quite a while). The seasonality of herb driven dressings are a topic that I will shy away from right now. Let's just say that the Chivry group's green salad dressing is a late summer dressing that can be enjoyed year around if you don't mind purchasing basil and parsley in the off months.

The only real curve ball with the Chivry group's dressing is Maggi. Maggi is a Swiss wheat sauce, similar to soy sauce, that can be purchased at German markets or sometimes can be found at a local Cash & Carry. Although a worthwhile seasoning to have in the kitchen, it is not an imperative ingredient for the Chivry group's green salad dressing. Sample the dressings yourself and decide which is your favorite.

Cheers!

D.G. Miller created http://duckspoon.com/ as a vehicle to both capture his family's favorite recipes as well as teach folks how to cook beautiful food from scratch. Duckspoon is a user generated website created in the hopes of sharing family recipes and bringing people together.

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