Sesame Seed Dressing

One of the most requested recipes I’m asked for is a good Sesame Dressing for salad, chicken or seafood. If you do a quick search on the Internet for “sesame dressing”, you will find hundreds of variations for this simple asian staple. Which one you decide on using may depend on your own personal tastes.

You can increase the amounts of individual ingredients to give this dressing more sweetness or some extra tanginess. This is basic recipe for sesame dressing that can be adapted to your own personal tastes.

Create Your Own Favorite Sesame Dressing Recipe

Start with this and then play around with it by making it a little hotter or try adding some other ingredients to see how what they do to improve or take away from the overall flavor.

As I say in many of the recipes on my web site at www.reluctantgourmet.com, use these recipes as starting points and develop your own recipes by adjusting the flavors. This is what is meant by “to taste”.

Basic Sesame Dressing Recipe

Ingredients

3 tablespoons of good quality soy sauce
3 teaspoons sesame paste (available in Asian markets and most supermarkets these days)
1/2 tablespoon hoisin sauce
1/2 tablespoon sugar
a dash or two of hot chili sauce, to taste
1 teaspoon rice wine (I like mirin, a Japanese sweet rice wine)
1/2 tablespoon of boiling water (good chance you’ll be cooking noodles with this dressing, so here’s your source)
1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds (optional)

How to Make A Basic Sesame Dressing

In a small bowl, whisk the soy sauce, sesame paste, hoisin sauce, sugar, chili hot sauce and rice wine together. Add the hot water and continue whisking until the sugar is completely dissolved. If you are opting for toasted sesame seeds, stir them in now.

Taste and adjust seasonings to your personal likings.

This dressing tastes better when chilled. Cover the bowl or transfer the dressing into a glass jar and refrigerate until you are ready to use it

Alternative Ingredient Suggestions

As I mentioned above, there are lots of variations you can make to this recipe or create your own from scratch. Here are some of the ingredients I found on the Internet that can be added to or substituted with that will change the final flavor of your sesame dressing:

honey soy sauce
dark soy sauce
fresh ginger
scallions
wasabi paste
hot or sweet mustard
Asian sesame oil
honey
Mayonnaise to make it creamy

Post Your Favorite Recipe for Sesame Dressing

I’m sure you have your own list of ingredients you like to use when preparing sesame dressing and I invite you to share your favorites in the REPLY section below.

How to Make Caesar Salad

Here’s a simple yet effective way to make a better than bottled Caesar Salad dressing at home in your food processor. Although his recipe is slightly different than my Caesar Salad recipe mostly because he doesn’t measure out any of the ingredients, the video shows you step-by-step how to make this classic salad dressing in your food processor or blender.

If you are interested in watching more recipes and cooking techniques, check out my cooking videos resource page. Here you can pick up some great tips and techniques to help become a better cook.

Insalata Caprese is the fancy gourmet name for tomatoes, mozzarella and basil, a dish I eat all summer long as soon as the fresh local tomatoes are ready.  Now I find out the Reluctant Gourmet is preparing them all wrong.

I was first told I was making them wrong by Connie Devlin, the mother of one of my wife’s close friends, Susan Devlin. Connie, of Italian descent,  possibly makes the best meatballs I’ve ever tasted. During a weekend visit to Susan’s home in New Jersey, we were preparing Insalata Caprese for a dinner party and I suggested adding a little aged balsamic vinegar.

Connie jumped all over me and said, “No vinegar. You don’t mix tomatoes and vinegar.”

“What, no aged balsamic vinegar!”  I didn’t believe her for a minute and continued my balsamic vinegar ways and enjoying every moment.

News to Me

So here I am on vacation in the beautiful oceanside community of  Avalon, New Jersey reading a few week old food section of The Philadelphia Inquirer and lo and behold I come across an article on Insalta Caprese.

And what do you think they say about making this classic summer treat? No vinegar. I am shocked, dismayed and still disbelieving so I read further.

Insalta caprese comes from the southern Italian island of Capri and according to tradition, the salad is made up of only five ingredients: tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, olive oil and salt. No vinegar. In fact, according to the article and in support of Connie Devlin, vinegar and tomatoes don’t work together.

Why?  Because Italians like their salad tomatoes firm, slightly green and tart rather than fully ripe and sweeter the way I prefer them.  To them, there is absolutely no reason to add more tartness to the tomatoes with balsamic vineagar. Southern Italians believe the firm, tart slightly green tomatoes are the perfect complement to soft, milky texture of fresh mozzarella.

Speaking of fresh mozzarella, we are talking about the type you find sold packed in water, not the stuff you find at the grocer in shrink-wrapped plastic that is more often used for making pizza. Don’t even bother serving those rubber balls of mozzarella with fresh tomatoes and basil. Not prudent at all.

I usually buy a tub of fresh mozzarella at Costco. It saves me a lot of money but also means I always have some on hand. The shelf life is at least a couple of weeks but be sure to change the water every once in awhile. Good quality fresh mozzarella should be soft, milky and sweet in flavor. You will know when it is starting to go just by the smell. So if you do not plan to have mozzarella every other night, you may be better off purchasing it in smaller quantitites.

The olive oil should be the best extra virgin olive oil you can afford. I like the olive oil from Georgio Zampa’s farm in Sardinia that you can read about at GatewayGourmet.com, but you can find good quality extra virgin olive oil at any gourmet specialty store and now in your local supermarkets. You don’t want to overpower the other fresh ingredients with the oil so you only need a small amount.

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