Cooking With My Mom: The BEST Italian Dressing

A very special guest — Chef Matt’s mom, Janice — reveals the secret to her famous and fabulous Italian dressing. It can be made in minutes and is wonderful on any salad or used as a marinade. Mangia!

Janice’s Famous Italian Dressing Recipe
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon ground herbs
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon granulated garlic
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

Well hello everybody and welcome to I want to cook Chef Matt here and we are in a different kitchen today we are in a very special kitchen with the most special person in the world if you’ve ever wondered about my inspiration my original inspiration for cooking well

Here she is this is my dear Mother Janice and today we are going to be making her famous famous Italian dressing in marinade Mom thank you for doing this uh it’s a pleasure to be here and welcome to my kitchen you are always a friendly face when you come in the

Front door and we can sit down together together and have a wonderful meal so thank you for being here today I’m going to show you something that is so simple to make now I know you’re probably looking at all of these things and saying I don’t have that but

They’re easy to find at your grocery store even in your little mini marks uh you can pick them up and be ready in a Flash to make some great dressing now the neat thing about these ingredients is they’re all very palatable and they’re all very good for you take out a

Bottle of dressing that you purchased at your neighborhood grocery store and look at the ingredients and folks if you can’t pronounce it do you really want to eat it well all of these things are things you know and they’re good for you and delicious when you put them all

Together which is what we’re going to do in just a minute all right Mom I noticed you have have this looks like you have a coffee grinder I thought we were making dressing why is there a coffee grinder out here absolutely and just a little tip before

We get into the coffee grinder is I do have two grinders one that I would grind coffee but one that I save for herbs and of course the Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree I got this at a yard sale I I don’t know I probably

Paid 50 cents I don’t know uh it is a Bosch it has lasted forever and it’s absolutely wonderful for herbs now when we get ready to assemble our dressing a really special hint for not only dressing but other things grind your herbs uh they won’t be gritty in

Your end product and they absorb the oil and the vinegar so much better so we have some tyan seasoning and as I say you can pick this up in your grocery store there’s no magic to it uh if you want to get really down to being a purist you

Can assemble your own by taking the individual herbs and mixing them but be sure to grind them before you start assembling your dressing or even your stews or anything for that matter so we’ve got as I said the Italian herbs and then I’ve also got just plain dried

Parsley and we will do that but I’m going to save your ears and we’re going to do that off camera okay I’ll see you in a Bit here’s a Nifty little handy Gadget that I use to mix my salad dressing obviously you can use a bowl you can use a whisk uh you can use a mason jar and shake it all up remember that when you’re making a dressing like this it is

Not going to have its own thickening that last um it smells so good uh so this is kind of neat because it has a plunger and you can mix it and pour it on your your salad you do have to remix your dressing every time because it does

Not emulsify the way commercial does but we’ve already talked about why those dressings emulsify okay so we’re going to start with a half a cup of vegetable or canola oil I do not use corn oil much in my cooking uh it’s just a personal preference if you have corn oil don’t

Run out and buy something else it’s too expensive use what you’ve got on hand I love the old measuring cup too yeah the old measuring cup was a shower present when I got married back when the dinosaurs were on the earth okay then we’re going to go with olive oil half a

Cup we always have olive oil in the house we do I can’t remember never never not having olive oil in the house growing up in a traditional Italian family olive oil was used for everything ladies you can give yourself a great facial it’s good for your hair as a

Conditioner it was even good on a piece of cotton for an earache I didn’t know that okay so now we have our our oil and now we start with our vinegar please don’t use white vinegar it’s great for the windows or to whiten your wash but it’s really hard on your

Your stomach and um cooking with it unless you’re pickling so we’re going to do a/4 of a cup of red wine vinegar and then we’re going to use apple cider vinegar a/4 of a cup I love apple cider vinegar yeah this has a so much softer feel and taste to your

Palette then we start with the real easy stuff remember the herbs that we ground that Matthew is sniffing I guess better this than glue huh folks I did enough of that in my early days okay uh then we want and this is a one teaspoon this is the onion powder

Onion onion powder and that was our ground herbs that was onion powder now we’re going for garlic and this is Grand granulated garlic please don’t use garlic salt if you only have garlic salt on hand there again you can use it but then don’t use salt um just use that as

Your salt and your garlic together and here’s our regular salt right yes just regular iodized white salt and I really don’t want to pour over that you all know that not to pour over your what you’re cooking how many times have you done that and you’ve ended up with a pan handful

Of stuff that is way too Savory for your dish on black pepper I only use a four of a teaspoon if you like a peppery more peppery flavor you can use more but that’s that’s it now we put our plunger in this also has a nice little por

Pouring spout just like that just like that it’s a very good idea to make this even a day ahead of using you can use it right away but it won’t be quite as Savory and we do want that Zing don’t we now the option to this is very very low

Tech wait until I dig into the archives to get the option to this good if you can’t do this surely you can do this just a mason jar and uh give it a good shake and you’re ready to go by the way a little tip if

You do want to invest in one of these I think uh now I know the brand name on this was Pampered Chef I’m sure other kitchen gadget makers also uh make an equivalent it has recipes and um uh measuring spots on on the side for a couple different salad dressings not

For this one though uh but I’m sure you can go on to eBay um hey check your thrift store you never know what you’re going to find there and it’s going to be great so Dad these these knives are even older than me and they are still phenomenally sharp and beautiful to work

With tell me a little bit about when you made these and how you made these knives well when we moved into our house in your Belinda we needed some dyes and I uh I was able to go online even back in those days and I ordered a set of

Blades just the uh the bare a blade and uh at the same time our nephew was working at a a woodworking shop in Paradise California and he brought down some uh some hardwood blanks that I could use for handles so I was able to cut the handles out and Riv them to the

Metal shank of the uh the knife itself and then of course I sharpened it up on a grin Stone and uh did the uh the hunting of it and every every about every three months I I give it a sharpening and and they keep lasting and

Lasting well they sure do you did a wonderful job on these and and I just I still love working with them so thank you good glad you enjoy it thank you car carbon steel folks this is this is a very special knife these carbon Steels so thanks D you’re welcome where’s that

Lettuce where’s that enela bring that enela let’s let’s show the folks what we’ve got here Bon Petit M all right folks the secret is out that is how you make my mother famous Italian dressing and marinade Mom thank you thank you for revealing the secret to all this time I’m going to try

To replicate it I I still don’t think it’s going to work out like yours it’s not going to taste like yours but folks there it is thank you Mom okay so last week’s trivia answer we probably could have used it this week on this salad a couple of you got it right

It was indeed celery root also known as Circ and boy is it tasty I’m going to do a future video on how to use it now for this week’s trivia question what in the world is it and this does come from this drawer and it’s many moons old I’ll let

Matt show you in the next video how it works what is this thing don’t forget if you think you’ve got the answer respond in the comments and by the way talking about those comments all of my kumod out there I want to hear from you I don’t want to

Wait until we all get to heaven to be able to say hi you let me know if you like the encela love you All