Ina Garten's Salad Dressing Rule You Should Never Forget
When it comes to advice on salad preparation and serving techniques, there's hardly a more knowledgeable and experienced chef to learn from than the Barefoot Contessa herself, Ina Garten. She has plenty of tips and tricks to use when serving salads, from the seemingly obvious such as buying ingredients in season or thoroughly washing and drying your greens, to the less-obvious, such as serving salads with cold ingredients closer to room temperature or dressing grain-based salads while still warm.
One of her best salad-related tricks, and also somewhat of a life lesson, is to use the "less is more" approach with your dressings. This is especially important when serving guests since it gives them a chance to add more if they want, rather than being forced to face a puddle of something they dislike. You can also leave the dressing on the side when serving a salad, so whoever's involved can decide for themselves how much dressing is too much.
Why and how you should lightly dress your salads
Besides avoiding the experience of eating salad like soup, there are a few reasons why lightly dressed salads are superior to heavily dressed ones. First, a properly built salad has a balance of flavors that too much dressing can override, when the dressing should be enhancing the ingredients. Likewise, too much dressing can ruin the texture of your salad; no one wants to eat soggy arugula when it could still be nice and crisp.
For salads that call for dressing, you should aim for moistened greens. That means the greens should still have a nice crunch to them and you can still taste their natural flavor, but you get traces of your dressing in each bite. The best way to get there is to lightly drizzle your dressing over your greens, followed by a good toss. If it tastes like it still needs dressing, add a dash more and lightly re-toss. If a layer of dressing starts to form on the plate or bowl underneath, though, that's your sign to stop. If you prefer exact measurements, start at around 1 or 2 teaspoons of dressing to each cup of salad.