Tangerine Vinaigrette And Buffalo Thousand Island

Many of our meals include a salad on the side covered in an array of colorful vegetables, and while there are plenty of great dressings available at the grocery store, we really enjoy making our own. Not only does this let us experiment with flavors and get exactly what we want on our salads, but it also lets us reuse old glass and plastic containers instead of dumping them in the garbage.

In previous blogs we've covered putting together smoky jalapeno ranch dressing or thousand island dressing and all the awesome things we put them on. There have been plenty of tweaks to those recipes over time and many other types of dressings we've tried. Today we'll look at a spicy buffalo version of thousand island, along with a vinaigrette made with fresh tangerines.

During our weekly grocery shopping we saw a spicy buffalo mayonnaise on clearance at Smith's and immediately thought it would be great for a dressing. For our hotter version of thousand island we used Mrs. Dash "extra spicy" seasoning, sugar, ketchup, worcestershire sauce, along with diced poblano and onion.

It all goes into a bowl and gets mixed up with a whisk - pretty simple!

After mixing by hand we get something with a much more appetizing color and texture, and it's really start to have a buffalo wing sauce look.

Pop the dressing into a container and stash in the fridge until you are ready to top a salad or use it as a condiment on a sandwich in place of mayo or mustard. This one's much spicier than the regular variety, but it has an awesome flavor I haven't found in any store brands yet.

If thick and creamy dressings aren't to your liking, a vinaigrette might be more up your alley. We originally wanted to do a blood orange dressing, but unfortunately none of the stores had any that week, so we went with tangerines instead.

For the dressing we juiced three tangerines (discard all the seeds and pulp of course) and mixed it with very thinly sliced green onion, dijon mustard, extra virgin oil, red wine vinegar, and a few handfuls of sugar.

After getting blending together this thinner dressing fits nicely in a cleaned out squeeze bottle and is ready to top a delicious salad with plenty of diced fruit.