Dad's Dressing: Salad Days

In "Fire Builder" I wrote about the barbeques we had when I was a kid. It wasn't unusual for steak to be left over - when you reach into the freezer and pull out a few steaks wrapped in white butcher paper with "t-bone" scrawled across them you occasionally end up thawing more meat than you need. Even when there was steak left over, four growing kids meant there wouldn't be much, certainly not enough on its own to feed those kids again the next day. My mother's solution to this dilemma was to make steak salad.

She'd cut the steak up into bite size pieces and toss with with lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, and whatever else there was around. Then she'd dress the salad with what we called Dad's Dressing. Dad's Dressing was an invention of my father's, a variation on Dale's Steak Sauce. (You can read about my connection to that steak sauce here.)

The dressing does an amazing job of linking the vegetables to the meat, blending the fresh green flavors of the salad with the smoky flesh.

This dressing is surprisingly good on any green salad, but it really shines when the salad contains grilled meat - whether it's beef, chicken, pork, or even salmon. The dressing does an amazing job of linking the vegetables to the meat, blending the fresh green flavors of the salad with the smoky flesh.

I've tweaked Dad's recipe, mainly with the addition of wine where Dad used water. And these days if I'm grilling something I'll often deliberately grill more than I need just to have some meat leftover for my favorite salad.

Dad's Dressing

3/4 c vegetable oil
1/4 c red wine (you can use water instead)
1/2 c soy sauce
1/4 red wine vinegar
1 tbsp ground mustard
2 cloves crushed garlic (or 1 tsp garlic powder)
1 tbsp dried marjoram or oregano
1 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp Tobasco

Mix all ingredients in a jar and shake thoroughly. Allow to flavors to meld for an hour or so before using. The dressing will keep for a couple of months in the refrigerator.

Kevin Weeks is a Gather food correspondent (Paisano), personal chef, cooking teacher, and writer in Knoxville, Tennessee who spends too many hours on his feet, cooking. "Paisano" is a column focused on peasant dishes from around the world. To read more of Kevin's writings or connect to him click here. His blog,Seriously Good, is read by 100,000 cooks a month and in addition he writes a weekly column forSpot-Onand is the Guide for Cooking for Two at About.com.