Cottage cheese. Sounds weird, but I can’t stand normal dressings, and cottage cheese always seems to be on salad bars. I’ve since met a few others who do the same. (To echo Jim Gaffigan, though, why do salad bars have puddings?)
Barring cottage cheese, oil and vinegar, red wine vinegar, crime fraiche, certain non-creamy vinagrettes. Usually no dressing whatsoever.
Chunky. At home I always have crumbled blue cheese on hand and I’ll throw some crumbles into the blue cheese dressing to chunky it up.
That sounds interesting I’ma have to try that sometimes.
I’m a honey-mustard fan. But if that’s not available, Italian/Balsamic/Vinegar and Oil will all do.
That’s when Kraft(?) bought the recipe and rights from the couple who invented it and started selling ready-made Ranch dressing nationwide. Before then you had to make it yourself with an envelope of seasonings you bought.
Vile stuff.
I don’t like sweet dressing. I want a zingy vinaigrette or plain vinegar.
Blue cheese vinaigrette is really good, too.
Ranch Cayenne. Haven’t heard of it? Mix one teaspoon of cayenne powder into a pint bottle of whatever ranch dressing you like and let stand in the refrigerator for a couple days… yum!
It works best if you take some of the dressing out of the bottle, whisk in the cayenne, then return the mixed stuff to the bottle and shake well. If you try to just put the pepper in the neck of the bottle and shake, it doesn’t mix well at all.
For the poll, I’m gonna vote vinaigrette, particularly balsamic. However, I do like a bleu cheese if calories are no concern.
Whenever I go to a Benihana or similar teppanyaki place, I get infatuated with the red ginger sauce served and go on a weeks long bender. It is pretty easy to make if perhaps having quite a few ingredients.
For bottled sauce at home, make mine Goddess from Trader Joe’s.
Ranch is ok for a dip, especially in a veggie platter situation. I mean, it’s no hummus but I’m not so snobby as to avoid dipping my raw broccoli and carrot sticks in it.
My favorite salad dressings are extremely spicy ones, but those are few and far between.
At restaurants, I’ll generally order ranch (or whatever creamy whatever they have.) If it’s a terrible restaurant, I’ll choose Italian.
At home, I make my own vinaigrette, basing it on olive oil, vinegar, garlic, Dijon, and whatever I have around that seems like a good idea. Sometimes I’ll mix it up with some soy sauce, sesame seeds and ginger and call it Asian.