I have always been fairly obsessed with salads. When I was in second grade, I asked my mother whether she could pack me a bottle of oil and vinegar in my lunch box so I could drink it. Okay, that’s not really a salad, but they go hand in hand and I loved vinaigrettes, too. To me, salads can be so much more interesting than lettuce with tomato and cucumber. I love mixing different foods together, especially different colors, textures, and flavors. Sometimes I use lettuces, sometimes not. A salad can have all raw ingredients or some raw and some cooked. Salads are about showcasing what’s in season, no matter how simple the ingredients. My everyday salads are created using what’s in my kitchen, but it is important to use fresh, flavorful ingredients because there’s nowhere for them to hide.
As long as you have a great vinaigrette, you can pull together an infinite number of salads. Looking for an easy way to get more veggies onto your plate? Every week I make two bottles of the Everyday Salad Dressing (here), thereby allowing me to have a default side dish at a moment’s notice.
Typically, a vinaigrette for a salad with lettuces is one part acid (such as vinegar or lemon juice) to three or four parts oil, depending on your taste. Add salt and pepper and you’re done. To take it one step further, you can add other flavors, such as Dijon mustard, honey, shallots or garlic, or fresh herbs. A vinaigrette for a grain-based salad would be a little different, more like one part acid to one part oil.