In simplest terms, vinaigrettes are little more than emulsions of vinegar and oil. Playing around with established salad dressings is what Marzetti does best, and its Simply Dressed line is the result. Is your table ready for the balsamic or pomegranate vinaigrettes?
Introducing: Marzetti Simply Dressed vinaigrettes
The ingredients of the balsamic vinaigrette are water, canola oil, balsamic vinegar, sugar, extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, salted egg yolk, mustard seed, xanthan gum and dehydrated garlic and onions. Like any vinaigrette that relies on balsamic vinegar for acidity, this dressing has a zingy taste with just a hint of sweetness. The mix has nine grams of fat, 0.5 of which is saturated, five mg of cholesterol and 230mg of sodium.
The pomegranate dressing contains water, sugar, canola oil, distilled vinegar, pomegranate juice concentrate, orange juice concentrate, extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, xanthan gum, fruit and vegetable juices and spice. It is tangy, sweet and sufficiently light to let the flavors of the food it complements come through. Marzetti’s Simply Dressed pomegranate vinaigrette features 4.5g of fat and 150mg of sodium.
What can you do with it?
The balsamic vinaigrette is perfect for marinades. Put a piece of skirt steak into a plastic Ziploc bag, add a cup of the balsamic vinaigrette and ‘massage’ the meat in the bag. Close the bag and squeeze out all the air. Leave it in the fridge for about five hours. Grill it to perfection; the meat will have a nice tenderness.
Simply Dressed balsamic vinaigrette also works beautifully in a salad with cheese. Combine a head of Romaine lettuce — chopped into bite-sized pieces — with cherry tomatoes, diced cucumbers, a sliced Vidalia onion and a package of crumbled Feta cheese. Add a small amount of pitted black or green olives, if you like. Drizzle the balsamic dressing over the salad and mix. Top the dish with sliced almonds.
While the balsamic vinaigrette is good at moving a dish into the direction of having a zingy taste, the pomegranate is looking for salad ingredients that play ball. Rather than making the salad taste one way or another, it complements the natural sweetness of the ingredients and offers a harmonizing element to the meal.
Use butter lettuce or spinach leaves as the base for the salad. Chop a small red onion, a few cherry tomatoes, a red bell pepper and a few dried cranberries. Drizzle Marzetti’s Simply Dressed pomegranate vinaigrette over the salad and mix it well. Top with a few walnut bits. Serve it on the same plate with a piece of grilled salmon. You might even want to mix a bit of the vinaigrette with a few drops of olive oil to put over the fish while grilling.
Okay; so how does it taste?
Would you believe that it is possible to taste the absence of artificial flavorings? The balsamic vinaigrette lacks the typically metallic aftertaste that off-the-shelf brands carry. The pomegranate dressing is sweet, but not cloyingly so. If you are a diehard store brand junkie, it may take your palate a bit to adjust, but the experience will be well worth it. Better yet, you will finally realize how good a salad actually tastes — when you don’t have all the difficult to pronounce chemicals masking the natural flavors.
Let the kind reader please take notice that I received this product for free and that I was compensated for the article.
