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As a European I don't understand this. Here, salad is merely consumed as an "oil delivery device", it's all about the dressing. So, accordingly, not one bit of

by d--b 8y ago

As a European I don't understand this. Here, salad is merely consumed as an "oil delivery device", it's all about the dressing. So, accordingly, not one bit of salad should remain dry. Ranch is thick, therefore annoying to use on salad, because it doesn't drench the whole thing. Unless you shake the salad, you'll have plenty of dry leaves. ewwww. Pretty good with fries though.

bovermyer 8y ago
Interesting perspective on salad. However, ranch has long transcended salad. The article goes pretty into depth on the varieties of things it's used with.
scott_s 8y ago
I use a small amount of dressing, but I also want it on the whole salad. So I spent time mixing it. Shaking would be ideal, but I don't have a container, just a bowl, so mixing has to do. It takes a minute, but it's not hard. As an aside, I use way less dressing than I did as a kid, and less than most people I see. Now, veggies drowning in dressing grosses me out. I just want a little bit of the flavor on the veggies.
dekhn 8y ago
In general, one must toss a salad to get good dressing distribution when the dressing is viscous. Also, having lived in California for a while, I've grown to like eating greens like frisee without any dressing at all.
- d--b 8y ago
  yeah, tossing, I've done it a bunch, and it's true that the thousand islands dressing with chicken salad does work. Frisee without any dressing though, I don't know how you manage. It tickles the tonsils in all the most unpleasant ways.
lghh 8y ago
I actually can't stand non-oil dressings on salad, but eat ranch on literally anything that has the potential to be greasy.
adlpz 8y ago
This is a generalization. As an European too, there's plenty of places here where it's common to just have some salt and oil and the protagonists are very much the different vegetables (and other stuff!) you put in the salad. Same for vinaigrettes and all sorts of dressings. I actually think salads drenched in greasy stuff are a bit too much.
- GreeniFi 8y ago
  As a fellow European and salad purist, I believe olive oil and salt is the only respectable dressing for a salad. Balsamic vinegar may be acceptable in some circles, but personally I see little point. Ditto lemon juice. ;-)
  - pvg 8y ago
    You call yourself a European? I just eat the birch tree bark fresh off the tree.
    - GreeniFi 8y ago
      You must be Welsh? As Hobbes said - not of the dark ages, but the countrymen of my father - nasty, brutish and short. :)
tptacek 8y ago
Explain, then, the Caesar salad, king of all salads.
- d--b 8y ago
  Well, I really dislike the Caesar salad, for obvious reasons stated above. But maybe an explanation for its success is that it's fried chicken with dip "disguised as a salad". The salad in the caesar salad is just to pretend it's healthy. Also the name kind of rules
  - tptacek 8y ago
    There is no chicken in a Caesar salad, let alone fried chicken. Where are you eating? Is this something they serve at Cheesecake Factory? It's named for the dude who came up with it, for whatever that's worth to you.
    - amyjess 8y ago
      Chicken Caesar salad is wildly popular in the US, and it's probably far more popular than original-style Caesar salad. I'd even go as far as to say that Caesar salad has become something like pizza, where the assumption is that of course you put toppings on it.
      - tptacek 8y ago
        Obviously, I'm aware of chicken Caesars. But, first, a chicken Caesar contains grilled chicken, not fried chicken, and second, if you order a Caesar (not a chicken Caesar) and it comes with chicken on it, you can send it back.
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        > Chicken Caesar salad is wildly popular in the US, and it's probably far more popular than original-style Caesar salad. Chicken Caesar is, for fairly obvious reasons, far more popular than traditional Caesar as a standalone meal, but it's probably far less popular than traditional (or, at least, not featuring chunks of meat) Caesar overall.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> As a European I don't understand this. Here, salad is merely consumed as an "oil delivery device", it's all about the dressing. Thick dressings are ideal for that, as they maximize the deliverable dressing per unit of vegetable matter. > Ranch is thick, therefore annoying to use on salad, because it doesn't drench the whole thing. Unless you shake the salad, you'll have plenty of dry leaves. If you don't toss a dressed salad you either have dry leaves or a pool of dressing (possibly both) depending on quantity and viscosity of dressing applied.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
amyjess 8y ago
TBH, I love ranch but never eat it on salad. I like using ranch as a dip for nachos. It goes especially well with the chips that the toppings somehow miss, and it still goes pretty well with the chips that are loaded with toppings. I've also found that it works very well with bread (the kind of bread that's served with dinner, not sandwich bread). I discovered this not too long ago, because my company likes to cater executive and sales meetings and then after the meeting, they put out the leftovers for the rest of the company to enjoy (this is famous within the company, and the phrase "the [Company-Name] 15" gets mentioned a lot... I've even seen it pop up in our Glassdoor reviews). Sometimes, these leftovers include dinner rolls or pieces of Italian bread, and sometimes they include salad with a bowl of ranch on the side. If I'm lucky, sometimes they'll include both. You see, I like bread, but it can get dry by itself... and I like ranch, but I don't like salad. So one day I decided to combine the best parts of them. I took some of the bread, cut the pieces in half, and started spooning ranch over them. I liked it so much that I've kept doing it every time both get brought out. The ranch works best with Italian bread with thick crusts, because it helps soften them a bit, but it's fine with dinner rolls too. Ranch as a dip for pizza is also pretty popular, but when I have a choice I'll use clarified garlic butter instead.
- HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
  tsk! The only true dip for pizza is buffalo wing sauce. OK, I'll go along with garlic butter...
tptacek 8y ago
Seriously, though, Caesar salad aside: there's a reason to make "creamy" (emulsified) dressings: most lettuce leaves are hydrophobic. If the only flavor you want is that of oil and salt, that's fine, but most of your culinary acid options are water-based. Getting flavors to stick to leaves is as tricky as getting them to stick to pasta --- meaning, deceptively tricky. "Thick" dressings were invented for a reason.

by d--b 8y ago

bovermyer 8y ago

Interesting perspective on salad. However, ranch has long transcended salad. The article goes pretty into depth on the varieties of things it's used with.

scott_s 8y ago

I use a small amount of dressing, but I also want it on the whole salad. So I spent time mixing it. Shaking would be ideal, but I don't have a container, just a bowl, so mixing has to do. It takes a minute, but it's not hard. As an aside, I use way less dressing than I did as a kid, and less than most people I see. Now, veggies drowning in dressing grosses me out. I just want a little bit of the flavor on the veggies.

dekhn 8y ago

In general, one must toss a salad to get good dressing distribution when the dressing is viscous. Also, having lived in California for a while, I've grown to like eating greens like frisee without any dressing at all.

d--b 8y ago
yeah, tossing, I've done it a bunch, and it's true that the thousand islands dressing with chicken salad does work. Frisee without any dressing though, I don't know how you manage. It tickles the tonsils in all the most unpleasant ways.

lghh 8y ago

I actually can't stand non-oil dressings on salad, but eat ranch on literally anything that has the potential to be greasy.

adlpz 8y ago

This is a generalization. As an European too, there's plenty of places here where it's common to just have some salt and oil and the protagonists are very much the different vegetables (and other stuff!) you put in the salad. Same for vinaigrettes and all sorts of dressings. I actually think salads drenched in greasy stuff are a bit too much.

GreeniFi 8y ago
As a fellow European and salad purist, I believe olive oil and salt is the only respectable dressing for a salad. Balsamic vinegar may be acceptable in some circles, but personally I see little point. Ditto lemon juice. ;-)
- pvg 8y ago
  You call yourself a European? I just eat the birch tree bark fresh off the tree.
  - GreeniFi 8y ago
    You must be Welsh? As Hobbes said - not of the dark ages, but the countrymen of my father - nasty, brutish and short. :)

tptacek 8y ago

Explain, then, the Caesar salad, king of all salads.

d--b 8y ago
Well, I really dislike the Caesar salad, for obvious reasons stated above. But maybe an explanation for its success is that it's fried chicken with dip "disguised as a salad". The salad in the caesar salad is just to pretend it's healthy. Also the name kind of rules
- tptacek 8y ago
  There is no chicken in a Caesar salad, let alone fried chicken. Where are you eating? Is this something they serve at Cheesecake Factory? It's named for the dude who came up with it, for whatever that's worth to you.
  - amyjess 8y ago
    Chicken Caesar salad is wildly popular in the US, and it's probably far more popular than original-style Caesar salad. I'd even go as far as to say that Caesar salad has become something like pizza, where the assumption is that of course you put toppings on it.
    - tptacek 8y ago
      Obviously, I'm aware of chicken Caesars. But, first, a chicken Caesar contains grilled chicken, not fried chicken, and second, if you order a Caesar (not a chicken Caesar) and it comes with chicken on it, you can send it back.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > Chicken Caesar salad is wildly popular in the US, and it's probably far more popular than original-style Caesar salad. Chicken Caesar is, for fairly obvious reasons, far more popular than traditional Caesar as a standalone meal, but it's probably far less popular than traditional (or, at least, not featuring chunks of meat) Caesar overall.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> As a European I don't understand this. Here, salad is merely consumed as an "oil delivery device", it's all about the dressing. Thick dressings are ideal for that, as they maximize the deliverable dressing per unit of vegetable matter. > Ranch is thick, therefore annoying to use on salad, because it doesn't drench the whole thing. Unless you shake the salad, you'll have plenty of dry leaves. If you don't toss a dressed salad you either have dry leaves or a pool of dressing (possibly both) depending on quantity and viscosity of dressing applied.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

amyjess 8y ago

TBH, I love ranch but never eat it on salad. I like using ranch as a dip for nachos. It goes especially well with the chips that the toppings somehow miss, and it still goes pretty well with the chips that are loaded with toppings. I've also found that it works very well with bread (the kind of bread that's served with dinner, not sandwich bread). I discovered this not too long ago, because my company likes to cater executive and sales meetings and then after the meeting, they put out the leftovers for the rest of the company to enjoy (this is famous within the company, and the phrase "the [Company-Name] 15" gets mentioned a lot... I've even seen it pop up in our Glassdoor reviews). Sometimes, these leftovers include dinner rolls or pieces of Italian bread, and sometimes they include salad with a bowl of ranch on the side. If I'm lucky, sometimes they'll include both. You see, I like bread, but it can get dry by itself... and I like ranch, but I don't like salad. So one day I decided to combine the best parts of them. I took some of the bread, cut the pieces in half, and started spooning ranch over them. I liked it so much that I've kept doing it every time both get brought out. The ranch works best with Italian bread with thick crusts, because it helps soften them a bit, but it's fine with dinner rolls too. Ranch as a dip for pizza is also pretty popular, but when I have a choice I'll use clarified garlic butter instead.

HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
tsk! The only true dip for pizza is buffalo wing sauce. OK, I'll go along with garlic butter...

tptacek 8y ago

Seriously, though, Caesar salad aside: there's a reason to make "creamy" (emulsified) dressings: most lettuce leaves are hydrophobic. If the only flavor you want is that of oil and salt, that's fine, but most of your culinary acid options are water-based. Getting flavors to stick to leaves is as tricky as getting them to stick to pasta --- meaning, deceptively tricky. "Thick" dressings were invented for a reason.