I’m a cook at my city’s convention center, and I’m kind of “in charge” of making the salad dressings. And, I’ve been having a bit of trouble lately with the raspberry vinaigrette: it turns into congealed sludge in the refrigerator. (I’m just learning to make this dressing; it used to be made by our former executive chef, but he was fired a few months ago and didn’t leave a written-down recipe when he left. So I had to find my own recipe.) I’m suspecting this is simply an ingredient-quality problem.
I’m using a slightly-modified version of the basic vinaigrette recipe found in the Joy of Cooking cookbook. The base dressing is just extra-virgin olive oil and red wine vinegar in a 3:1 ratio, plus salt and pepper. I leave out the garlic and mustard listed in the recipe. The raspberry flavor is provided by a quantity of seedless raspberry freezer jam blended into the base dressing.
The first time I made this recipe (2-gallon batch), I used Kirkland extra-virgin olive oil from Costco, and a 6.5-pound tub of “Freezerves” brand raspberry freezer jam. The end result was excellent, flavor-wise, and what didn’t get used for that night’s dinner event remained smooth, nice-looking and good-tasting in the refrigerator for more than two weeks. All that was needed the next time we used it was a quick stir with a wire whisk to counteract a tiny bit of oil-vinegar separation.
The next time I needed to make the dressing, the head chef ordered the extra-virgin olive oil from one of our suppliers. I made sure he ordered “pure” x-virgin olive oil for the dressing, not the cheaper 70/30 canola/olive blend we use for sauteeing. Also, we were not able to get the 6.5-pound tubs of freezer jam from this supplier; they carried the same brand, but in a case of six 1-pound tubs. Two days later, the whole batch had turned into that thick, congealed sludge I mentioned. Completely unusable.
The differences I see: the olive oil from Costco stated on its label that it was made from 100% Italian olives, while the olive oil from our supplier was a blend of olive oils from several different countries. And while the freezer jam was the same brand, I suspect that there may be some difference between the stuff in the 6.5-pound tubs and the stuff 1-pound tubs. The vinegar was the same both times.
Could the simple difference in the olive oils used be the reason for the failure of the second batch? Or something different in the jam? Going back to the 6.5-pound tubs of jam is simple enough - apparently those come from our other main supplier. And I know that the Costco olive oil works well, but that’s a pain in the neck, since we have to go get it instead of having it delivered. Specifically, I have to go get it, since I’m currently the only one in the kitchen with a Costco membership and our company still hasn’t gotten around to providing the executive chef with his own company Costco card (not to mention he and his wife have one car between them, so she drops him off and then takes the car, so he can hardly make the run to Costco anyway) — and I have to pay for it and then go through the hassle of running to the accounting office in a different building to get reimbursed.
Anyway, ideally I know one solution would be to simply not refrigerate the dressing. If it was just plain vinaigrette I could get away with that, but the addition of the raspberry jam pretty much forces me to refrigerate it (health codes and all that). I would also like to find a better solution than freezer jam for the raspberry flavor. The main advantage of using freezer jam is that it’s a consistent product we can get year-round.
Any other chefs out there have any suggestions?