Addicting Buttermilk Dressing
This dressing is the best thing that I got out of four years in St. Louis. Sad but true.
Working there was one of the only reasons those four years didn’t feel like a complete waste of life. Making this dressing at home is always a pleasant trip down memory lane. Back in the day, we made an 18-qt batch every couple of days for our famous little gem salad. That salad was by far our most popular item - for good reason, too! It’s very simple but a very thoughtfully composed dish, and the mix-ins really makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
And I don’t know what exactly makes this dressing in particular so addictive. It doesn’t even have msg or fish sauce or anything that makes commercially-made ranch so delicious. Still, it’s hard to stop after one bite.
I am tired of dividing my recipe by 18 or 36 each time I want to make a reasonably-sized batch at home, so here it is for the world to see (and for me to reference easily)! Versions of it are also floating around from some local magazine interviews, so I don’t see a problem with sharing this on my person blog. This is the scaled down version of the exact recipe from back in the day. I’m sure they still go through vats and vats of this on the daily.
Union Loafers Buttermilk Dressing (yields 1 qt)
In a tall and narrow container, add:
20g egg yolk (~1 large yolk)
125g buttermilk
100g sour cream
41g shallot, rough chopped
Optional: place in a strainer and rinse under cold water to remove the pungency, especially if planning to keep a few extra days
9g garlic (4 medium cloves)
20g lemon juice
9g salt
Puree with a powerful immersion blender until smooth.
With the blender running, stream in:
500g neutral oil
Start slowly at first and wait for the first bit of oil to incorporate. Then you can pour a bit faster.
Adjust seasoning with more salt, pepper, and lemon juice (depending on intended use).
At the restaurant, we always seasoned salads to order with salt and pepper, and tossed fresh herbs in each time. At home, I most often serve it as a dip, so I season the dressing more heavily and add herbs into the entire batch.
Little Gem Salad:
Two large handfuls of quartered, chopped, and washed little gem lettuce into a little
A pinch each of salt and pepper
A three-fingered pinch of fines herbs: dill, parsley, chervil, and chives
A three-fingered pinch of pickled shallots
A generous squirt of dressing around the bowl
A handful of the most labor-intensive breadcrumbs in the world (but you could probably just toast some panko)
Toss all that together, adjust seasoning if necessarily, and pile high in a wide and shallow bowl. Decorate “randomly but artfully” with the same garnishes on top.
To serve as a dip, add more salt than the initial 9 grams until it tastes almost too salty, then stir in ground pepper and chopped herbs. Decorate with dill on top. My favorite thing to dip? “Salty snacks” aka generic Sysco kettle chips. If you can’t get that, Kettle Brand sea salt chips taste exactly the same :)
Why didn’t I take pics of any food I made there? I DO NOT KNOW. But now I regret it a lot.
Fun fact: The breadcrumbs are made by toasting artisan sourdough bread (bc it was mainly a bread bakery), grinding the pieces in a robot coupe, sifting out the too-large pieces through a perforated hotel pan and THEN also sifting out the too-dusty pieces with hand-held strainer. We only used the perfectly sized pieces in between.
It was not my favorite prep task. Is it worth the extra mile? Depends on how much you love the person you’re serving.
Tangentially related additional fun fact: For a while, we made raspberry jam for our pbj sandwiches. The recipe called for cooking down raspberries until soft, straining out all the seeds, and adding back exactly 50% for the optimal amount of seed texture. Very extra, but this level of detail for a sandwich place is what made the food there so special.
Notes:
I prefer to make the 1-qt batch because it takes almost exactly 1 egg yolk. But because of the raw yolk, this doesn’t keep for as long as other dressings. Maybe 7 days tops? That’s why I typically only make this for a larger gathering where I’ll only have a little bit left for myself for the rest of the week.
Yes, the raw yolk is necessary for the thick luxurious texture. Sorry if that’s not your thing. I guess it could be substituted with some sort of commercial lecithin product or another strong emulsifier? Or egg substitutes? I’ve never tried though.
Chervil is hard to get, yes. I think I’ve seen it outside of a restaurant setting exactly once, in an extra fancy Chicago Whole Foods. I usually just omit it. But for the sake of completeness I included it in the write-up.