Food & Drink 

Advertisement

Healthy Salad Dressings

What are all the best-dressed salads wearing this summer? Terry Farris goes in search of something light, healthy and tasty to drizzle over her leaves.

Salads don't need to be dripping in fat and calories to be delicious. From the starting point of a basic oil-and-vinegar mixture (although technically the two don't actually mix) you can create tasty and healthy dressings for any salad.

Let's start with the basics.

Oils
When it comes to dressings, you could do a lot worse than follow the example of the Mediterraneans.

We've all heard about the benefits of a Spanish, Greek or Italian diet. And it's widely agreed that olive oil plays a part in helping to reduce cholesterol and blood pressure - even if experts aren't exactly sure why.

Extra virgin olive oil is one of the few oils that doesn't require chemical processing. It retains more natural minerals, vitamins and antioxidants, and is therefore much better for you, than other oils such as animal fats. However, it still contains its fair share of calories (about 225kcals per 30g - more than butter).

Choosing an oil
For salad dressings, it's best to use light oils such as sunflower or light olive oil. An extra virgin olive oil used on its own can sometimes overpower lettuce leaves and any other flavours in the dressing.

Other types of oils suitable for dressings are groundnut, rapeseed, grapeseed, safflower and corn oil. Oils such as sesame, hazelnut, walnut, pumpkin seed, almond and even macadamia nut are available in speciality shops or larger supermarkets. These oils tend to be strong and highly scented and are good used for specific purposes and in moderation.

Make your own flavoured oils
You can also buy flavoured oils or make them yourself. For a herb oil, gently heat a quantity of olive oil and add chopped chives or basil. Remove from the heat, cover the pan and leave to cool. Blend using a regular or hand blender then strain through a fine mesh sieve and store for 3-4 days in a corked bottle to let the flavours develop.

Make a spicy chilli oil by gently heating olive oil, several finely chopped fresh chillies, a bay leaf and an unpeeled garlic clove. Let cool then strain through a fine mesh sieve and store in a bottle.

Delicious     Digg     reddit     Facebook     StumbleUpon

  Get the latest iVillage news on your desktop    Sign up for more iVillage RSS feeds

© iVillage Limited 2000-2008. All rights reserved. | © iVillage inc. 1995-2008. All rights reserved.
iVillage Ltd is a UK company registered in England & Wales (3837269) at 80-110 New Oxford Street, London WC1 1HB