Roasted Garlic and Shallot Salad Dressing Recipe
Make your salad sing with this roasted garlic salad dressing recipe! Roasting garlic transforms it from pungent to sweet and creamy. Combine this with the wonderful flavor of roasted shallots, champagne vinegar, lemon juice and Dijon mustard for this easy, homemade salad dressing recipe.
How to Roast Garlic
Making roasted garlic is really easy. And, I promise you, your kitchen has never smelled so good! Roasting garlic takes this kitchen darling from pungent to creamy and sweet. Once roasted, garlic transforms into a creamy spread that’s wonderful on dishes like my Roasted Garlic and Broccolini Vegan Pizza with Almond Ricotta.
You know what else is great about garlic? It’s really good for you! Garlic has a series of anti-properties: anti-oxidant, anti-bacterial, anti-viral, anti-clotting and anti-cancer).(1) Research shows that garlic is effective in combatting the common cold, reducing blood pressure, improving cholesterol levels, preventing Alzheimer’s, preventing cancer and improving athletic performance. How’s all that for a little bulb? (*) (*) (*)
How you prepare garlic, however, is the key to unlocking its health benefits. Garlic contains two ingredients needed to promote its health benefits. These ingredients are separated from each other until garlic is sliced, chopped or pressed. Once combined, these ingredients begin the process of creating allicin, garlic’s healthy compound. This process takes time though and is sensitive to heat, so exposing garlic to heat within 10 minutes of slicing, chopping or pressing it will stop the allicin-making process. A good rule of thumb? Preheat your oven and while it’s preheating, let the garlic do its magic!(2)
How About Some Roasted Shallots to Go with Your Roasted Garlic?
If you’re not familiar with them, shallots are in the same family as garlic, looking almost like a large head of garlic. Most often, they’re used in place of onions. They’re more mellow in flavor than onions and are often used in dishes where a more delicate flavor is desired. Like garlic, they’re great for your health – coming in second behind garlic as an anti-cancer agent, but well ahead of onions. (3)
Roasting shallots gives them a soft texture and a mild, sweet flavor. They can be prepped and roasted right next to the garlic in the oven and they take roughly the same amount of time. To use them in the dressing, you’ll need to wait until they’re cooled to peel the skin.
Making Roasted Garlic Salad Dressing
This superbly-flavored salad dressing takes a while only in the sense that you need to allot time for the shallots and garlic to roast. After that, it’s quick and easy. I make it in my mini food processor, first combining the garlic and shallots with champagne vinegar, lemon juice, Dijon mustard and maple syrup. After these ingredients are well combined, I stir in some extra virgin olive oil and season with salt and pepper.
Why stir in the olive oil as opposed to combining everything in the food processor in the first place? It has to do with something I learned when researching my Best Vegan Pesto Recipe. Olive oil, it seems, can take on a bitterness when blended at high speeds. (*)
What’s in My Kitchen to Make This Vegan Recipe Easier?
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Want to know what tools and resources I keep on hand to make my vegan cooking even easier? Here’s a short list of what helped me create this blog post and recipe. For the complete list, visit my Shop where you can find the kitchen gadgets I like as well as a list of books that I recommend.
Mini Food Processor
There are a few tools in my kitchen that get used all the time and this mini 4-cup food processor is one of them. It’s perfect for sauces that don’t require me to bring out the big guns. Clean up is easy and it doesn’t take up much space.
A Really, Really Good Chef’s Knife
No, that’s not the brand. It’s just the idea! I own this set of Global™ knives and they’re some of my most prized possessions in the kitchen. This set is universally well-rated for the at-home chef and will get you a good, solid set of knives without totally breaking the bank.
Vegetables Illustrated, by Cook’s Illustrated
For the record, I do count books as a tool in the kitchen, particularly a book like this. This book is a wealth of not only “how to” in the kitchen, but also “why to.” I love the behind the scenes intel on my ingredients, especially vegetables!
While this book isn’t specifically vegan or vegetarian, it does contain a lot of very helpful information!
Eating on the Wild Side
Want to get the most from your vegetables? This book is a brief history into vegetables popularly used in vegan cooking. It discusses how to choose the right varieties to get the maximum health benefit.
How Not To Die
While perhaps a little sensational in name, this book is my plant-based bible. I learned so much about the benefits of a plant-based diet from this book and I try to incorporate what I’ve learned into my recipes. In fairness, I am more liberal with oil than what’s generally recommended in this book, but I know what I know about garlic because of it.
In all seriousness though, I read and reread this book. It’s thorough and an excellent motivator.
Roasted Garlic and Shallot Salad Dressing Recipe
Ingredients
- 1/3 cup champagne vinegar
- 1 medium-sized roasted shallot see directions for roasting instructions
- 1 head roasted garlic see directions for roasting instructions
- high-temperature oil for drizzling
- 1 tsp lemon juice
- 1 tsp dijon mustard
- 2 tsp maple syrup
- 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
- salt & pepper, to taste
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 425 degrees.
- Place the shallot on one side of a small baking sheet. Drizzle with a high-temp oil and season with salt and pepper.
- Prepare 1 head of garlic by slicing the top off, exposing each of the individual cloves. Place in a small sheet of aluminum foil, with the cut side up. Allow to rest for 10 minutes while the oven preheats. Drizzle with a high-temp oil and wrap fully in the aluminum foil. Place next to the shallot on the baking sheet.
- Roast the shallot and the garlic for 45 minutes. After 45 minutes, open the top of the aluminum foil and allow the garlic to brown while the shallot continues to roast. About 20 more minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.
- Peel the shallot and remove the roasted cloves from their skins.
- Combine the roasted shallot and 6-8 of the roasted garlic cloves with the vinegar, lemon juice, Dijon mustard and maple syrup in a small food processor. Pulse until the shallot and garlic are processed and creamy.
- Stir in the olive oil by hand and season with salt and pepper.
About Herbivore’s Kitchen
Herbivore’s Kitchen is a blog run by me, a plant-based home chef and aspiring food photographer. I switched my and my family’s diet to a plant-based diet after learning about the health benefits of going vegan. Making this change has prompted a variety of food and holistic-lifestyle related questions that I explore through this blog. I talk about how to pick and prepare the most nutritious foods, to how to reduce waste at home, to how to live a more sustainable lifestyle while on the road.
Sources
(1-3) Robinson, Jo. Eating on the Wild Side, New York, Little, Brown and Company, 2013.