Mary McDougall's Oriental Dressing

In yesterday's post I mentioned the Asian Dressing that Mary McDougall says is a favorite in her house. 

First off, let me tell you I went back and fixed the broken link. It seemed they changed the name from "Oriental" dressing to "Asian" and the link I had saved and shared yesterday had "Oriental" in it when they changed the official link to use "Asian" instead. The link above and now there is the right one.

Anyway, the recipe:

Asian Salad Dressing
Prep: 3 minutes
Serves:Makes 1 cupIngredients

• 1/3 cup water

• 1/4 cup rice vinegar

• 1/4 cup low sodium soy sauce

• 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper (optional)

• 1/4 tsp garlic, crushed

• 1/4 tsp gingerroot, crushed

• 1/4 tsp guar gum

Directions
Combine all ingredients in a small jar with a lid and shake until well mixed.
Hint: Guar gum is a thickening agent that does not require cooking. It gives oil free dressings a nice consistency for clinging to salad leaves.

As I also mentioned yesterday, I can't find the guar gum I thought I bought. When I finally gave up looking and went to check my shopping cart on Amazon to see if/when I ordered it, and saw, oops! I never did order any. It's in the cart now. When I get a few more items I need I'll put an order in.

In the meantime, I did find an unopened bag of Instant ClearJel that I bought many years ago. I had 2 bags - one opened that I had used a few times and one unopened. Since it says to use within a year on these undated bags, I tossed out the opened one. For the recipe above, I first used the 1/4 teaspoon the recipe said for the guar gum, but after an hour it did nothing, so I added the tablespoon that the bag says makes one serving. 

Another half hour and still no visible signs of thickening, so I added a second tablespoon. A half hour later when we used it there was some globs on the side of the bottle (similar to uncooked cornstarch) but the liquid itself was just as liquidy as if I put nothing in it.

As for the taste, it was identical to Less Sodium Teriyaki Marinade & Sauce that I used to buy for my son. Just as watery, too, which meant we each poured out way more than we wanted to and wound up using the entire cup of dressing in this one meal.

I'm still going to order the guar gum and try making this the way it's written. Maybe next time I'll pour it into one of the condiment squirt bottles instead of an old salad dressing bottle - that's sure to slow down the flow.