Learn how to make Ina Garten's Blue Cheese Dressing and how to customize it to your liking. A great dressing to use for a wedge salad.
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✍🏻 Featured Comment - Linda says "Love this recipe! The fresh tarragon makes it!"
Homemade Dressing Is Well Worth It!
The grocery store shelves are lined with all kinds of salad dressings. The cheap ones usually aren't very good, and the expensive ones that are good are—well—expensive. Making your own salad dressing is the best way to go for both cost and flavor.
Yes, salad dressing is one more thing to make when you may already have a list of things to prep for dinner. But the good news is that you don’t have to wait until dinner time to make it. And if you have a food processor or blender, it’s not hard to do at all.
My daughter is a big fan of blue cheese dressing. She definitely doesn’t like the cheap ones, so we’ve turned to making it ourselves. It’s a great way to explore different types of blue cheese and find what works best for you.
The recipe I’ve used for years is Ina Garten’s. In fact, this very blog post you're reading has been my number-one post on Pinterest all that time. Thank you to everyone who has come over from Pinterest—I hope you’ll take the time to read through all my tips for this recipe!
When you get the hang of this salad dressing be sure to check out my other dressing recipes such as Sesame Ginger Dressing, Avocado Salad Dressing, 3 Ingredient Peach Vinaigrette, and Tahini Salad Dressing.
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Ingredients
So what do you actually need to make your own blue cheese dressing. Let me give you a rundown of the ingredient list.
- Blue cheese - Roquefort cheese is what is Ina recommended for this recipe. That is what I tried first using some good Roquefort blue cheese from Trader Joe's. They had a high quality blue cheese at a really decent price. This Roquefort is made with whole raw sheep's milk. I have also tried it with smoky blue cheese. Give it a try with whatever you can find and that is within your budget. This is the biggest flavor component of the dressing.
- Mayonnaise - Any brand of mayo will work for this recipe. Your best bet is to buy a larger jar as the small jars are not very cost effective.
- Heavy cream - You should look for heavy whipped cream in the grocery store.
- Vinegar - When I first tried this recipe, I did not have any tarragon vinegar that the recipe calls for. So I used the vinegar I did have, which was rice wine, and then added some fresh, chopped up tarragon from my herb garden. This is what I still do.
- Fresh tarragon - For us, using the fresh tarragon is what really makes this dressing extra special. Tarragon has a licorice like flavor, similar to fennel.
- Freshly ground black pepper - There are two things that I always recommend when it comes to pepper - always use a pepper mill to freshly grind it and use it to your tastes. Add in some in taste, and add more if needed.
- Salt - There are two kind of salt that I use mainly Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt and Redmond Real Salt.
Top Tips
The key to making this salad dressing is getting the ingredients blended up. You need to incorporate the blue cheese, mayo, and cream so you need some power to do that. I find that a food processor is the best appliance for the job. It gives everything blended together rather quickly.
You also could use a blender or even one of those mini blenders, like a Magic Bullet. It's going to be more work and time with those devices but if that is what you have, don't let it slow you down for making your own dressing.
Simple vignette salad dressing that are more just oil and vinegar combined with some other flavorings can be made by hand with just a whisk. I have a post on How to Make Easy Grapeseed Oil Salad Dressings, where I show you how to customize your own salad dressings with interchangeable ingredients, which is perfect for those that don't have something to whip together in a blue cheese dressing with.
FAQ
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Ina Garten's Blue Cheese Salad Dressing
Ingredients
- 4 ounces chopped blue cheese Roquefort cheese recommended
- 1 cup mayonnaise
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 2 tablespoons vinegar
- 1 tablespoon fresh tarragon
- ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- kosher salt to tasate
Instructions
- Combine all the ingredients in a food processor. Process til smooth
- Taste the dressing, add more salt or pepper if needed.
Scott
Salad dressings need not have mayonaise. Some of the best dressings I know are simply oil and vinegar. Whether it is regular, balsamic, rice, or whatever.
Personally, oil and vin dressings are superior in every way.
Linda
Delicious. I didn’t have cream so substituted with whole milk and used dry tarragon. Turned out just fine and probably a few less calories.
Linda Lee
I have made this twice and the first time was delicious but I didn't have tarragon. The second time I did add fresh tarragon from my garden and didn't like the overwhelming licorice flavor it gave to the dressing. My suggestion is to leave it out or add it to a small quantity to see if you like it.
Cathy
Love this recipe! The fresh tarragon makes it!
Eric Samuelson
It really does.