Homemade Italian Dressing

Key Ingredients

• Extra virgin olive oil. The base of this dressing is the ingredient you’ll taste most. Use a good one. I love the Private Reserve Greek olive oil for its peppery, grassy finish, while our Italian Nocellara is buttery and smooth.
• Red wine vinegar adds soft, rounded acidity, but feel free to use white wine vinegar instead. 
• White vinegar. Plain old distilled vinegar gives this Italian dressing recipe its signature puckery bite. 
• Parmesan cheese provides a nutty, savory flavor while bringing the emulsion together. Use Pecorino Romano for a sharp, salty, more assertive dressing.
• Garlic. I’m of the mind that garlic should be a dominant flavor in Italian dressing. I grate peeled cloves on a microplane to make a fine pulp that disperses through the dressing. The garlic’s heat mellows as it sits in the vinegar, but the flavor remains. 
• Honey. Just a spoonful softens the vinegar’s edge and adds aromatic, subtle sweetness.
• Tomato paste. The natural glutamates in tomato paste balance the flavor of the oil and vinegar with savoriness, and gives it a ruddy orange color.
• Italian seasoning blend of dried oregano, basil, thyme, and other herbs provides character.
• Sweet paprika. Adds sweet chili warmth and color.

How to Make Homemade Italian Dressing

• In a bottle or a jar with a tight-fitting lid, combine 2/3 cup extra virgin olive oil, 1/3 cup distilled vinegar, 1/4 cup (1 ounce) packed finely-grated Parmesan cheese, 3 finely minced or grated garlic cloves, 1 tablespoon honey, 1 teaspoon tomato paste, 1 tablespoon Italian seasoning, 1/4 teaspoon sweet paprika, 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, and 1/2 teaspoon freshly-ground black pepper.
• Shake to combine.
• Store leftover dressing in the refrigerator for up to 4 days. Allow to come to room temperature before serving and re-shake to emulsify it again. 

How to Make Creamy Italian Dressing

There’s another version of Italian dressing popularized by an Italian chain restaurant that’s also wildly popular. It’s opaque, with a light golden color and creamy texture. 

You can make a dressing like that by swapping the tomato paste for a couple of tablespoons of jarred mayonnaise, or you can use another trick I came up with.

• Skip the mayo and replace the tomato paste with a hard-boiled egg yolk or two. Just blitz the dressing with an immersion blender. The yolk acts as a natural emulsifier, binding the oil and vinegar into a creamy, cohesive dressing.

Bonus: it’s a safer option than using raw egg yolk! 

Italian Dressing History 

Despite the name, Italian dressing is an American invention. The origin story of what we now think of as Italian dressing — oil, vinegar herbs, and spices — is the legacy of two Italian-American women cooking in different restaurant kitchens in the 1940s.

Florence Hanna, whose family recipe for oil-and-vinegar dressing became so popular at her husband’s Massachusetts steakhouse that they eventually bottled and sold it as Ken’s Salad Dressing, and Lena Sollomi, whose Sicilian family recipe formed the basis of what would become the Wish-Bone brand in Kansas City. 

What to Make With Italian Dressing

While testing this recipe, I used up the majority of each batch to dress this Big Easy Italian Salad. It’s a combination of crisp romaine (and sometimes I add iceberg) with radicchio, tomatoes, olives, and pepperoncini.

Fresh greens with a drizzle of Italian dressing make a great crunchy side for shrimp scampi, salmon picatta, or another Italian-American favorite, chicken spiedini. This dressing is also a great shortcut marinade for grilled chicken breasts. 

Once you have a jar on hand, here are three more recipes where you can put this Italian dressing to work.

• Italian Pasta Salad: Rotini tossed in a zesty Italian dressing with salami, marinated artichokes, cherry tomatoes, olives, pepperoncini, and fresh mozzarella pearls. 
• Spinach Tortellini Salad: Cheese-filled tortelloni with baby spinach, fresh herbs, mozzarella, olives, and sun-dried tomatoes.
• Antipasto Salad: A briny, satisfying tumble of salami, pepperoni, provolone, mozzarella, artichoke hearts, and olives.
• Use it for more than salads! Spoon it over grilled fish as a finishing sauce, toss it with your favorite roasted vegetables or use it as a chicken marinade.