Thousand Island Dressing

After having fantastic success with making homemade barbecue sauces and rubs, the next logical step was to try out making our own salad dressings as well. While Megan generally likes ranch or poppy seed dressing, thousand island is my go-to option. Below you can see the ingredients we used for our homemade version (ignore the beef ribs in the background - those were thawing for a later meal that will be covered in another blog coming soon). The basic components are mayo, ketchup, apple cider vinegar, sugar, hot sauce, relish, onion, and salt and pepper.

For the base of the dressing, mix together the mayo, ketchup, relish, seasonings, and hot sauce until it's all well blended.

Then throw in some finely diced onion (a little for just some flavor, a lot to change the texture and make the dressing thicker), a handful of sugar, and a few dashes of the cider vinegar. Mix it all together until it reaches the consistency and color you want. If it isn't quite the dark pink you'd like, either throw in paprika or more ketchup. To add another dimension to the flavor, put in a few squirts of liquid smoke.

While it can be fun to just dip croutons into thousand island, I wanted to use it as a spread and as a salad dressing. First up I decided to put together a turkey sandwich using the thousand island instead of normal condiments like mustard or mayo.

Any sandwich worth the name needs a nice bunch of fresh lettuce, along with some slices of delicious cheese. In this case I went with sharp cheddar, but anything will do - swiss, provolone, or pepper jack are all great options.

For some crunch I also put on a few strips of crispy bacon. On the other side of the bread is shaved turkey from the deli and an extra dollop of the thousand island for more flavor.

Here's the finished sandwich, cut in half and served with some of our delicious Italian style potato salad. While we haven't covered making that version of the American classic yet, you can check out our recent blog entry covering how to make traditional veggie and chicken bacon ranch potato salads.

Next up I decided to make a "double-decker" veggie burger, using both a "Grillers Prime" and "Mushroom Lover's" patty from Morningstar Farms.

Topping my deluxe veggie burger will be cooked cabbage, green bell pepper, white onion, and green onion. I've also liberally sprinkled on southwest seasonings and garlic powder.

After the cabbage and other veggies are sufficiently soft they get put on the first veggie patty, while some swiss cheese topped the second.

Each side of the bread is getting smothered in a different condiment - root beer barbecue sauce on the left, and then thousand island on the right. We've actually made several new barbecue sauces recently, including root beer, orange, and black cherry. Blogs on how to make those delicious sauces are coming soon, and in the mean time you can catch the low down on how we made smoky raspberry BBQ sauce here.

The excess vegetables are layered on one side of the bread, along with a few slices of tomato.

Here's the first veggie patty starting the bottom layer of the nearly-finished burger creation.

And after adding on the second patty with the cheese, this delicious sandwich/burger creation is ready for eating!

Of course, I didn't just slather my thousand island on sandwiches, as it also saw some normal usage - as salad dressing!

You might notice there's no meat on that plate - that's because a rack of delicious root beer ribs was added on next, and we haven't quite gotten to that blog yet (but it's coming soon)!  Check back soon for a range of amazing meals we've put together recently, including new ways to cook ribs, ranch injected whole chicken, a crazy good pork southwest salad, flaky quiches, hearty breakfasts, and much more.