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Why is some form of sweetener (pastes, liquid sweeteners) added to dressings? I don't like sweet dressings plus I prefer not to get used to the sweet taste.

Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

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This event was on April 9, 2024

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 course-specific questions, to how to turn your cooking passion into profit or simply hearing the perspective of a professional chef, Chef Dan is ready to answer them all.

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Question

Rosie AIELLO

Why is some form of sweetener (pastes, liquid sweeteners) added to dressings? I don't like sweet dressings plus I prefer not to get used to the sweet taste.

Answer

That's actually just, uh, you don't have to use the sweetener if you don't want them. Um, for a lot of the dressings that I think you're referring to, they might have vinegar that's added to them, and a lot of people don't like the bitterness of the vinegar, so you'll usually add a sweetness to kind of offset that. So the whole, uh, you know, s savory or salty sweet kind of thing, kind of that medium kind of comes into that, right? So you're looking to be able to offset the vinegar with a little bit of sweet, so it's not as bitter as you're eating it. So that's typically why people are adding a certain sweetener to a dressing. But, um, yeah, but that doesn't mean you have to add 'em in there. Uh, what I would do is actually make the dressing that you're talking about and just don't add the sweetener part of it and taste it, see what you think, and then you can slowly add a little bit of that sweetener to it if you want to, um, you know, like the paste or the liquid sweeteners.

Dan Marek

Director of Plant-Based Culinary & Dev

*Dan Marek* is a chef educator who has been teaching vegan and vegetarian cooking for over 15 years. At Rouxbe, he is our Director of Plant-Based Culinary and Development where he helps develop content, classes and builds courses for many of our partners. Dan is a board member of Slow Food Austin, the Institute of Child Nutrition, and Conscious Capitalism. He has earned his BA in Journalism from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University and holds certificates in Nutrition from Cornell University. Prior to his role with Rouxbe, Dan worked with Whole Kids Foundation training teachers and food service at schools across the country on nutrition and culinary best practices. He also worked as a Healthy Eating Educator at Whole Foods Market’s flagship store in Austin, TX, was a personal chef for some of Austin’s elite business people, taught classes in culinary techniques at Austin Community College, The Natural Epicurean, and Le Cordon Bleu. Dan also regularly volunteers cooking or speaking about nutrition for the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Marathon Kids, Health Alliance for Austin Musicians, and the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Austin and Central Texas.