Never Buy Salad Dressing Again | Samin Nosrat | Cooking 101 | NYT Cooking

Get the FREE recipe for Samin’s House Dressing: https://nyti.ms/4lp6N3l
Her Creamy Lemon-Miso Dressing: https://nyti.ms/46f538s
And her Creamy Sesame-Ginger Dressing: https://nyti.ms/4emJlS5

These three dressing recipes from Samin Nosrat, the “Salt Fat Acid Heat” author, will have you reaching for salads all year long. They’re not just simple, they take any kind of greens you have on hand to the next level.

First up is a delicate sherry-shallot vinaigrette from Rita Sodi and Jody Williams of Via Carota in the West Village. It’s such a stalwart for Samin that she now just calls it her “house dressing.” Use it on any salad with tender greens, grain and bean salads, or a niçoise.

Next up, Samin’s sesame-ginger dressing is perfect for a salad of crunchy romaine and cabbage, just-boiled green beans, or rice or noodle bowls.

And last but not least, her creamy lemon-miso dressing, inspired by a dressing at Kismet Rotisserie in Los Angeles, is somehow both light and rich.

This video is part of Cooking 101, our series on kitchen fundamentals. Every episode covers a different technique, with tips and recipes from guest hosts who are experts to set you up for success.

Read more about salad dressing from Samin: https://nyti.ms/4laLFyk

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“’This is like truly
the best dress — that was why I was like, do
not make this video without this. It is the best recipe
in my whole book. It’s so good.’” [MUSIC PLAYING] “’Welcome to Cooking 101. I’m Samin Nosrat,
writer, teacher, cook. I am in New York City at the
New York Times Cooking studio kitchen. Today, I’m going to teach you
all about salad dressings. My family’s from Iran. My mom always made the
delicious Shirazi salad, like a tomato,
cucumber, onion number. But that’s not what we think
of as salad here in this country. The only other salad
my mom would make — bless her, she’s
a great cook — was Romaine hearts, Pecorino
cheese, sun dried tomatoes — it was in the ‘90s
— and a very, very lemony dressing
that was so lemony. She has the most
acidic palate. This is not like what a
seven-year-old wants to eat. I thought I hated salad
until I started working in restaurants as a cook. And the first restaurant
where I worked is Chez Panisse in Berkeley,
California, which I think of as a temple to salad. And it kind of blew my mind
to see all of the things they consider salad — roasted
beets drizzled with creme fraiche, sliced tomatoes and
avocado — that’s a salad — roasted vegetables drizzled
with a creamy dressing. Things were so much more
than just some lettuce leaves and oil and vinegar. Now I don’t work in
restaurants anymore. I’m just a regular
person at home, trying to eat as much salad in
my life as possible for health and joy reasons. And I would like to help you
make your own life better, too. I wrote a cookbook. It’s called ‘Good Things.’ It
was not an easy book to write, [LAUGHS]: in large part
because it’s a book of mostly recipes, and I hate
writing recipes. And then one day, I was
making a creamy sesame ginger dressing to make
this slaw that I was trying to reverse engineer
from this deli near my house. And I made it, and
it was so good. And I was just standing
there thinking to myself. I was like, wow,
this is so good. I wish I could share
this with people. If only I had a convenient way
to share the recipe for this dressing with people. [LAUGHS]:’” [MUSIC PLAYING] “’I think of salad dressing
as the big umbrella term. There’s the oil and
vinegar vinaigrettes, and then there’s thicker,
emulsified, creamy dressings. A vinaigrette is — the word comes from
French, and it just means like a
vinegar-based dressing. It’s pretty simple. Here’s a vinaigrette,
pretty much ready to go. This is just one part
vinegar, two parts oil. Oh, another thing
that’s a vinaigrette — [LAUGHS]: I will never
forgive if you cut this out of the video.’” [MUSIC PLAYING] “’So this is a scarab pendant. It’s a scarab beetle. I bought it because
scarabs represent transformation and rebirth. I also bought it because when
the vintage jewelry person sent the listing to me, she
said, this is not a pendant, it’s a vinaigrette. And I was like, what? Excuse moi. Excuse moi. [LAUGHS] It’s not a locket, exactly,
but there’s a little beautiful, gilded
cage in here. And it’s open. And in Victorian times,
people were kind of smelly, so a refined,
elegant woman would take a little piece
of cotton and soak it in a perfume or an essential
oil and put it in here. And then you’d have this
good-smelling thing called a vinaigrette, and it would
make your day smell a lot nicer. This is just one of the
coolest facts I ever learned.’” [MUSIC PLAYING] “’At its heart, the
most simple version of a vinaigrette
is oil, vinegar, and a little bit of seasoning. I think it helps to have
a tiny secret amount of sweetness in there, and
I know I’m not the only one, which is why balsamic
vinaigrette is a classic favorite. Before we go into
the first recipe, I’m just going to show
you the most simple, most basic version
of a vinaigrette. To get that salty
and sweet and acid in one ingredient,
seasoned rice vinegar, and then some
delicious olive oil. So really, it’s a
two-ingredient vinaigrette that we may need to balance
with a little extra salt. The ratio, this is not the
most acidic of vinegars, but in general,
it’s like a 2 to 1. Sometimes it ends up
being maybe 3 to 1, depending on how tangy we
want to go for our lettuce.’” [MUSIC PLAYING] “’You really want
to whisk it up. Whisk it up. [LAUGHS]: If you’re just
stirring in a circle horizontally, the stuff that’s
on top is not going to mix with the stuff
that’s on the bottom. So you really have to stir
at an angle, hence the whisk in this jar. Or even better, do this. And then we can taste. See how it already
looks cloudy? That’s because they’ve
combined temporarily to become a suspension.’” [CRUNCHING] “’Honestly, that tastes
pretty — pretty good to me. But if it needed a
little more something, I could now adjust
it in the jar. I made everyone look for
the teeniest, tiniest ladle. When you mix with
your ladle — [LAUGHS]: this is so silly. When you mix with your ladle
or your whisk or your spoon or whatever it is that
you’re going to pull, make sure you whisk at a
diagonal angle, like this, rather than like this, so
that you’re combining, right, the lower density oil and
the higher density vinegar. Does that make sense?’” [MUSIC PLAYING] “’This one comes
from Via Carota, one of my favorite
restaurants in New York City. I wrote about it for ‘The
New York Times’ Magazine, and it went viral as the best
salad dressing in the world. Honestly, it’s the only
one my friends and I, my cook friends and I, make,
to the point where now we just refer to it as house dressing. Even kids, salad-averse
kids are always like, man, I love Samin’s salad dressing. It starts with a shallot. Shallots are so
great in dressing. They add that crunch, but
you do have to take care. If you just add shallot
directly into a dressing without doing a
little bit of prep, you’re going to end
up with fire mouth. So now we have
all this shallot, and you’re just going to want
to rinse it off with some cold water. That’s going to get that
initial onion fire off of there. Another way, a different kind
of recipe is to just place your shallot in a bowl and
coat it with some acid, whether it’s lemon or vinegar. That’s called macerating. If you let a shallot macerate
like that for 10 or 15 minutes and then build your
dressing on top of that, that will have
softened that fire. And then the secret ingredient
in this salad dressing at Via Carota is so strange. It’s warm water. I had never really added
water to a vinaigrette before. And when I asked them why
they did it, they said, it’s because it softens
and smooths out the whole dressing. And I don’t understand
it, but I abide by it. I always do it
now, and it really does make a little difference. So if you just add your
water and some aged sherry vinegar here. I will say this is one of
those ingredients it’s worth buying a good bottle, nicer
than maybe the grocery store brand because that classic
aging that happens often in a place where sherry has
been made for centuries, it really does produce
a very delicious, mild, well-rounded vinegar. Let me taste this one. This one itself even
has almost a little bit of a sweet edge. It doesn’t feel like it’s
cutting you in the back of the throat. Because vinaigrette and salad
dressing is, in general, not the most
complicated cooking, doesn’t have a lot of fancy
heating techniques to obscure flavors, it is worth it to
start with very good-tasting ingredients. One of the other little
quirks of this recipe is that they use two
kinds of mustard. So this is whole
grain and fine Dijon. This mustard is going to
help this dressing emulsify. It won’t be a super
long-lasting emulsion. An emulsion is a peace treaty
between two natural enemies, oil and vinegar. They don’t like each
other naturally, which is why they separate,
like this is starting to do. So an emulsion is the act
of binding them together into a creamy third state. And there are a
lot of tools that are very delicious and helpful
that are emulsifiers that help hold that emulsion in place. Mustard is a great emulsifier. So sometimes I’ll add
mustard to a dressing, just a little bit, even if
I don’t want mustard taste, just because I want
mustard emulsifying help. And see, when I do this,
nothing’s happening because I’m just stirring
the stuff around. So you really got
to go like this, to get your whisk or your
ladle or whatever in there and bring the stuff that’s
on the bottom up to the top. Num, num, num, num, num.’ ‘This dressing is so good
because it does exactly what you want a salad
dressing to do. It coats the
lettuce beautifully. It has this little
perk of acid that makes you
be like, [GASP]:. And acid makes
your mouth water, and so you’re kind of like,
I want more, I want more. [LAUGHS]: And so it truly
is just like a ‘I want more’ feeling. And so when my mouth wants
more, I know I’m good. O.K., let’s build a salad. Today we’re really lucky. We’re starting with beautiful,
‘fresh from the farmer’s market’ heads of
baby lettuces. Full disclosure — this is
not how I always start salad at home. I often use bagged
Romaine hearts. I always am thinking about
the size of the lettuce or the size of whatever it
is that I’m going to eat. I want to have a
multitude of crunches. I want to have every bite to
have multiple different kinds of offerings. We have some beautiful
shaved watermelon radishes. They’re so gorgeous. I mean, I feel like these are
nature’s watercolor painting. And then at the end, we’ll
fold in some whole leaves of herbs. I love a little
secret herb bite.’” [MUSIC PLAYING] “’This is kosher
salt, my favorite. This is nice and
light and flaky. And it’s going to dissolve
once you put your dressing in. And then it’s always better to
underdress than to overdress. I am a notorious overdresser. [LAUGHS]: Let’s
see what happened. O.K. But you can
always fix it. You can always add a
little more lettuce. One thing I am fanatical
about is tongs. I do not believe in tongs
for dressing a salad. I believe in using
your hands and making sure everything is coated. I’m going in, I’m
being thorough, but I’m not compressing. This is not a
massage situation. This is a delicate
lifting situation. Let’s plate. We lift, and we pile. And if you want to
be really chef fancy, take a little bit
extra special things. Season it, dress it. And then I put them on top. Chef drizzle.’” [MUSIC PLAYING] “’This is a sesame
ginger miso dressing. This is the reason I wrote
the book that I just wrote. This one I think of as a nice
introductory creamy dressing because it doesn’t
involve, really, any skill. It just involves my new
favorite kitchen tool of all time, the immersion
blender, which I think of as an emulsion machine.’” [MUSIC PLAYING] “’Since the immersion
blender is so powerful and so wonderful, you don’t
have to do a ton of prep with these ingredients, but you do
have to slice it a little bit. The thing I like
about this dressing, I’ve pushed every element
of sesame, of ginger, of acid to the very edge, so
it can hold up to a slaw that sits over the course
of a few days. So this is white
miso paste, which is kind of the mildest and
sweetest of the miso pastes. Honey, quite a lot of lemon
juice, seasoned rice vinegar, which, again, has a little
sugar and salt in it. And this is the toasted
sesame oil to add the sesame flavor.’” [BLENDER WHIRRING] “’I’m going to see if I can do
a little preliminary zhuzhing. O.K., and then you’re
just going to drizzle — or I will — we both will, together —
drizzle the oil in very slowly while blending. When I use an immersion
blender, I will say, I do like to work in a taller
and narrower container, rather than a wider
bowl because it’s a way to guarantee that this little
blade comes into contact with everything that it needs
to come in contact with and actually blends it and
smooths it and breaks it down. It tastes quite delicious. I actually think it can
use a little more salt. This will eventually separate
because there’s not an amazing amount of emulsifiers in
there holding it together. But the beauty of the
immersion blender is, even though this is enough
dressing for several days or several solids, when
you bring it back out of the fridge, you
just zhuzh it again, and it’ll come right
back together.’” [MUSIC PLAYING] “’We have our creamy
sesame ginger dressing. We’re going to use it
to make a delicious, super simple slaw. The thing I love about
this slaw is it’s good now, and it’ll be good tomorrow,
and it’ll be good the next day, too. So honestly if
you’re at my house, it might still be
good in five days. But I’m not going to
tell you to do that. [LAUGHS] And I also love salted roasted
peanuts, which you can either chop or leave whole. I will say, peanuts
do a funny thing. They kind of
absorb the dressing and turn this funny
color and texture. If you’re not going to
serve this right away, add them at the last second. But we’re going to eat
this right now, so. And again, no tongs. Please use your hands. I know it seems
counterintuitive, but I almost feel
like things should inch toward the overdressed. Part of what you’re expecting
when you’re eating something dressed with a creamy
dressing is that creaminess. And so if it’s underdressed,
it’s really disappointing. But still, you’ll see this is
not like — it’s not swimming. It’s just all
going to be coated. Oh, my god. Honestly, because this
dressing is so highly seasoned and like I said, I took
everything to the edge, it’s actually already perfect,
which never happens.’” [MUSIC PLAYING] “’No shade to all
my other dressings, this is my favorite dressing. It was inspired by a dressing
at a little restaurant in LA that I’m obsessed with
called Kismet Rotisserie. And they have this lemon
poppy seed dressing, and I begged them
for the recipe. And they wouldn’t give it to
me because they were writing their own cookbook, which they
did, and you should go buy it. So I had to reverse
engineer it for myself. [LAUGHS]: And somehow,
I ended up with this, which is not exactly the same,
but it’s become indispensable in my kitchen, and every
single person I’ve shared it with has it at all
times at their house. And it’s so good!’” [MUSIC PLAYING] “’We’re going to start by
making an aquafaba mayonnaise, or some people call
it a fabanaise. Aquafaba is just a Latin
term, and it just means ‘bean water,’ literally just the
bean cooking liquid from any pot of beans. I have found that
chickpea cooking liquid is my favorite
aquafaba for salad dressings. It’s the most neutral
in flavor and in color. What you’re going for is
the consistency kind of like an egg white. It should be almost snotty. So if the aquafaba in
whatever can of chickpeas you opened or the
chickpeas you just cooked is runnier than that,
then you can just reduce it on the stove
for a few minutes until it thickens
to that consistency. Let it cool to room
temperature, and then use it. This is basically acting
like an egg in a mayonnaise is going to act. Mustard, as I said
earlier, is an emulsifier, so it’s going to help this
aquafaba mayonnaise come together. This is just a portion. It’s 1 tablespoon of the
total amount of vinegar — that’s apple cider vinegar
— that’s in this.’” [BLENDER WHIRRING] “’All right, so I’m a
little bit off the bottom, and I’m at an angle. And now I’m just going to
drizzle this oil in, drop by drop.’” “’And what’s the reason
for going so slow?’” “’I don’t know. It’s science. Like, [LAUGHS]: there’s only
so much something to cling to something else in there. And if you go too fast,
it can’t handle it. And it breaks, and it
turns into an icko mess. You can already see it’s
starting to get thick and creamy, which is nice. Oh, yeah, it’s
happening, guys. It’s happening. Can you see it? Does it look creamy? O.K., I’m going to show you. I’m going to show you
how creamy it just got. I was really worried. I thought I was going
to make a fool of myself on the internet, again. It’s that creamy. It has that stiff of a peak.’” “’Wow.’” “’Let me get out of the way. It is really magical. So this, we can set
aside for a moment. And then we’ll just get
everything else into here and turn it into
a smooth mixture, and then mount it into
the fabanaise base. Apple cider vinegar,
granulated sugar, instead of a wet sugar, maple
syrup or honey, that would make it more
liquidy and more runny. And I’m trying to keep this as
thick and creamy as possible. Freshly-squeezed lemon juice. So now my secret ingredients
— onion powder, celery seed, miso paste. I feel like every recipe
in this book, I’m like, I’ll just add all. An entire lemon’s zest. Maybe 1 lemon or maybe — honestly, I feel like
you can’t put too much, so I’m going to
put a little extra. And then some garlic.’” [BLENDER WHIRRING] “’This is an emulsion
at its finest. This is a return to
the ‘90s salad bar.’” [CRUNCHING] “’Mm, oh, my god. [LAUGHS]: I think there’s
something really nostalgic about this dressing. Can you guys just
come taste it so you can give me some words? Because it’s so fun. It’s just — it tastes like
a very good version of like your childhood
storebought –’” “’Mm.’” “’– something. This dressing is truly so
all-purpose and delicious that you can put it on
everything, including turning something as simple
as roasted vegetables into a elevated side dish. [LAUGHS]: I like taking
broccoli really nice and dark and getting all of
this caramelization. And I don’t know why
I started doing this, but I thought it would be
nice to massage lemon zest into my broccoli when
it’s still warm.’” [MUSIC PLAYING] “’Ooh. [LAUGHS]: Look. Look at all the stuff we made. I hope that you can see that
it’s so simple to make a salad dressing. We started with our
most simple version of a vinaigrette. Once we got a little bit
more advanced and we started adding mustard and
other emulsifiers, the dressings stay in that
creamy state a little bit longer. Hopefully, this is giving
you the courage and bravery [LAUGHS]: and tools
you need to start making your own dressing and
having it at home, so that you can really start expanding
your idea of what a salad is and can be. Find these recipes
at the link below at newyorktimescooking.com or
in my book, ‘Good Things.’’” “’Anything else?’” “’No.’” “’Thank you so much.’” “’Happy salad to you.’” [MUSIC PLAYING]