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-onion 1.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

Emily

I saw another site with a similar dressing that also had celery seeds as one of the ingredients, but none had cilantro or 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

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.