Knowledge Base > Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

This event was on Tuesday, May 09, 2023 at 11:00 am Pacific, 2:00 pm Eastern

Join Chef Dan Marek in his virtual office as he welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to Ask Anything – from cooking techniques to cours… Read More.

Recorded

Question:

As I spend time using various recipes from FOK, I am wondering about the use of oil in salad dressings. Please can you advise me some of the things I might use in place of the oil. ?

— Linda Kolberg

Answer:

Now, salad dressings are one of those areas that people are always a little confused by because the use of oil is so prevalent outside of forks over knives. Now, um, things you'll see in the forks over knives tasks, if you haven't gotten to the salad dressings yet, we do offer a host of different dressings from a Caesar to a Chipotle. Um, there's a fig balsamic. Um, there are a couple different, um, versions in there, but you're not going to see like your typical oil-based vinaigrette. What we're really trying to do is make the dressings based out of food and try to keep the, um, the, the, the fat's basically a little bit lower. Cause that's really the reason that in forks over knives, you're avoiding, um, any oils is you're avoiding the unpro, you're avoiding processed foods 140 calories per tablespoon of any kind of oil. So if you can avoid that, it's definitely gonna help you on your journey for forks over knives. So, um, if we're looking at different dressings from forks over knives, like the balsamic vette is typically like a dried fruit that has been blended up with the different herbs and spices and balsamic, um, which creates a really nice kind of sweet dressing for it. But if you're looking for something like a Caesar, um, you might be doing something like a seaweed and, uh, you could do cashews. I like to actually use silk tofu and then do garlic granules and chives and, um, some seaweed in that as well too. Then blend it up and it's a great dressing to be able to put over things that's, um, it doesn't have, uh, uh, a lot of fat to it. I'm not actually adding any fat to it. Um, but it does have a good protein source as well that's full of flavor depending on the herbs and spices that you actually put into it. So you'll see once you get a little further into the class, there's a wide variety of different ways to be able to make no oil dressings that really help add nutrients, but not a lot of fat to your salads, um, or whatever you're using the salad dressings for. A lot of people use 'em for dips for different vegetables as well, which is a great use for those recipes. So good luck on your journey, Linda.
Dan Marek

Dan Marek

Director of Plant-Based Culinary & Dev

rouxbe.com