You know how some people get reeaalllly bored of drinking plain water even though it’s part of their “get healthy” plan? That’s how I feel about using the same salad dressing day in and day out. So when I was asked to try out four different salad dressings from Kraft, I said Send em’ on over!
The standby dressing in our home is one we make by mixing a good quality olive oil and balsamic vinegar together. But like I said, I get a bit tired of the same taste every night. In terms of calories, according to My Fitness Pal, I’m looking at 67 calories for 1 tablespoon. And the nutritional info for a homemade vinaigrette is shown below.
Nutritional Info for a Homemade Vinaigrette
In contrast, the Kraft Pourable salad vinaigrettes shown in the photo above are 25-30 calories for 1 tablespoon. They are also low in fat (1.5 to 2.0 grams), and the ingredient list includes fruits and vegetables.
However, with convenience often comes a trade-off, so I did a close read of the ingredient list. The first thing that I found was xanthan gum, which acts as a thickener and helps ingredients stay blended on the shelf. Despite its strange-sounding name, xantham gum seems harmless and is actually growing in popularity because it is a helpful ingredient in gluten-free baked goods. Corn syrup as an ingredient also raised my eye brows, but I have since learned that it is distinct from high-fructose corn syrup, which has been the topic of a spate of negative media stories as of late.
The nutritional info for my favourite Kraft vinaigrette (Garlic Parmesan with Roasted Cauliflower) is below. You’ll see that the Kraft recipe has far less calories (25 calories versus 67 calories) and fat (1.5 grams versus 7 grams) than the homemade one above, but note that it has far more sodium (115 mg versus 34 mg). Fat versus salt: The choice is yours, as they say.
Nutritional Info for My Fave Kraft Dressing: Garlic Parmesan with Roasted Cauliflower
After educating myself on the nutritional info and ingredients, I could now get to the good part — testing! The flavours for these four new Kraft Pourable salad vinagrettes are:
- Berry Balsamic
- Roasted Yellow Pepper, Garlic and Lime
- Fire Roasted Tomato with Basil
- Garlic Parmesan with Roasted Cauliflower
I really liked the taste of all of them, with my favourite being the Garlic Parmesan and my least favourite being the Berry Balsamic because no matter how many times I try, I just can’t seem to do fruity tastes with green salad. I just much prefer savoury with my veggies.
Pasta and Salad Night at Our House
One neat little thing that Kraft has done is to include extra recipe ideas on the side of the bottles for using these dressing for more than salads.
So when we were hosting a rather large gathering of folks recently, we decided on a casual BBQ menu with side salads. I made a green salad and used the Fire Roasted Tomato Basil dressing on it, the Looneyspoons’ Moroccan quinoa salad, and then took Kraft’s tip and added the Garlic Parmesan dressing to mashed potatoes. I made plenty of all three salads to ensure everyone’s bellies would be filled and that I’d have leftovers for lunches, but there was not a speck of the mashed potatoes left in the bowl!
So, the final conclusion on these salad dressings? I like them and will keep a few on rotation in our home fridge, and I suggest keeping one in the office fridge too for lunches. Sure, your colleagues will probably sneak some for their salads too, but you can consider it your own little contribution to boosting office morale.
P.S. This post if part of a much larger Kraft Canada campaign launching this morning, so if you’re interested in the reviews of other bloggers and how they used these dressings in other recipes, they are all collected in one spot on Pinterest! (As we know, I’m not much of a cook, but some of my fellow bloggers are fabulous cooks!)
Disclosure: The products mentioned above have been given as part of a sponsored post through my ad network, SheBlogsMedia, for Kraft Canada, in exchange for being featured on Coffee with Julie. The opinions expressed in this post are mine and have not been influenced in any other way.
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