As part of my sodium-reduction campaign to deal with Mr VOW’s cardiac health, I need to find a recipe that he will eat and has little to no sodium. Pre-heart-attack, he was known to ingest great quantities of salad (YAY!) in a 50/50 ratio of salad to dressing. His favorite dressing was Thousand Island.
Which is about the worst of salad dressings!
Long ago, he liked French dressing, the orangey-red stuff.
I remember my mother making a French dressing using a can of tomato soup as the base, and it contained powdered pectin to keep everything emulsified. I’ve Googled my heart out, and I can find many tomato-soup-French-dressing recipes, NONE contain pectin.
I’ve searched the websites of pectin companies.
The yield of the recipe is about 3-1/2 cups.
Any suggestion how much powdered pectin must be mixed into the recipe to keep the emulsion? Do I have to heat the liquid to dissolve the pectin?
Please, @chefguy, give me the benefit of your vast foodworking knowledge!
A tablespoon of pectin will gel about 4 cups of jam. You’ll want a lot less “set” than that, but that should give you a place to start until the pros weigh in.
Here’s a simple recipe for a pretty good French Dressing. Personally, I’d use “low-salt” Heinz for the ketchup and omit the added salt altogether.
Homemade Ken’s Country French Salad Dressing
3/4 cup honey 1/3 cup ketchup 1/3 cup cider vinegar 1/3 cup chopped onion 3 garlic cloves, minced 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon paprika 1/2 teaspoon celery seed 3/4 cup vegetable oil Directions In a blender or food processor, combine the first eight ingredients; cover and process until blended. While processing, add oil in a steady stream. Process until thickened. Store in the refrigerator. Yield: 2 cups.
Put it all in the blender on high for about 1 minute. Best if left in fridge at least overnight before using. We always kept it in an oldpeanut butter jar so it was easy to shake up before using.
That’s very similar to the recipe I got from “The Spruce Eats” website for the tomato soup French dressing. I’ll probably be customizing the recipe inthe future, maybe even adding an ingredient or two from your recipe.
I’ve been doing a LOT of customizing for his diet. First thing I do is eliminate all salt.
I must be doing it right. He has no water retention problems, and has lost 52 pounds since January!
That’s great news!
If you want to make it more like thousand island, you would add cucumber relish and mayonnaise.
Obviously most mayo has a lot of salt. For a good substitute, soak about a cup of cashews in hot water for about 15-20 minutes. Drain well and blend until creamy. This works as a mayo sub in almost any recipe.
Both relish and dill pickles have a lot of salt. You could try adding just the dill though, and it might give him the flavor he is looking for. To make it “Russian” add a tblsp of prepared horseradish.
I’ll just throw in my two cents for xanthan gum as possibly an easier way to get a stable emulsion than pectin. Since it doesn’t require heat, you can just toss some in the blender when you prepare your dressing. I bought my last jar from Amazon, but I recently saw it in the “Bob’s Mill” section of a local grocer. Go sparingly, a little goes a long way.