RECIPE: Looking for: vidalia onion & tomato salad dressing

16 years ago

We are looking for a vidalia onion & tomato dressing, like that sold here:

http://www.braswells.com/ProductInfo.aspx?productid=593

We've bought it from other vendors before too. Its way too expensive though, and it just seems we end up recycling a lot of glass from this. We can easily make up a good sized batch of it for the cost of one bottle, if I have a reasonable recipe.

I've looked on the net, and found really only ONE recipe for such a dressing - this one below, repeated in many places.

http://www.recipesource.com/side-dishes/dressings/tomato-vidalia-onion1.html

It comes out with the proper texture, but the flavor is way off. The cilantro seemed to really come through, and there is no strong cilantro flavor in the store bought version. As importantly, our version tasted way too much like spaghetti sauce. I assume this was partly the basil. I also recall that with a few days aging, the cilantro flavoring died off a bit, but it was just as strongly good on spaghetti as the day we made it.

I know that we can just drop out the basil and cilantro, but it might be a bit bland then. Has anyone got a better recipe for this? Really, I assume I just need to know what spices/flavorings to use. Or could it be what kind of tomato we use?

Thanks for any ideas,

John

Comments (5)

fearlessem
16 years ago
I think it would really help if you could post the list of ingredients on the bottle... I went to that website and the website doesn't list the ingredients...

Emily
blizlady
16 years ago
I did a search and actually found this dressing being sold at e-bay. One seller listed the ingredients as:
Ingredients: Water, Crushed Tomatoes (tomatoes, salt, citric acid, water, cane sugar, vinegar, mustard (distilled vinegar, mustard seed, water), Vidalia Onions, onion powder, salt, poppy seed, spices, garlic powder, xanthan gum, EDTA, erythorbic acid(as an antioxidant), less than 1/10 of 1% potassium sorbate added as a preservative. 3.0% Vidalia Onion by Weight.

I saw another site with a similar dressing that also had celery seeds as one of the ingredients, but none had cilantro or basil.
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blizlady
16 years ago
Well, my hunt only brought up the exact same recipe that you found at recipe source. I would think that you can eliminate the basil and cilantro, and the spices can possibly be a blend of pepper or even paprika. I would follow the recipe source recipe and saute the onion as they say with the spices in a little water, wine or broth, and add the rest of the ingredients. Add more vinegar, sugar and seasonings to taste.
sawdust_maker
Original Author
16 years ago
The choice of spices seemed to be the important issue to me, as the one recipe was way over the top with the cilantro and basil.

How important is the tomato choice? I'm thinking a meaty salad tomato as opposed to a canned crushed tomato, to avoid a sauce flavor as much as possible. Skin the tomato, remove any seeds.

Then as suggested, add moderate amounts of (poppy seed, vinegar, salt, mustard, sugar, pepper/paprika, celery seed, onion powder, garlic powder) to taste.

If I can get it to work, I'll post my results.

Thanks for the feedback, john
blizlady
16 years ago
I wrote to another company (Wood Orchard) and they graciously provided their ingredients. Maybe this will help you too:

The ingredients in our Vidalia Onion and Summer Tomato dressing are as
follows:
Crushed Tomatoes (tomatoes, salt, citric acid), cane sugar, apple cider
vinegar, water, distilled vinegar, Vidalia Onions, mustard(distilled
vinegar, mustard seed, water), dehydrated onion, onion powder, salt, poppy
seeds, paprika, xanthan gum, garlic powder, erythorbic acid, EDTA, celery
seeds, less than 1/10 of 1% potassium sorbate as a preservative, black
pepper, and dill weed.