Making salad dressing without acid or high fat or capsaicin

Question

One of my relatives has GERDs (acid reflux). I'm trying to find / make a salad dressing that avoids

• acidity
• large quantities of oil
• spiciness (i.e. anything with capsaicin or peperine)

But I'm struggling to accomplish this because I don't know what type that would be. I bought a book called Garde Manger by the Culinary Institute of America (CIA).

For "cold emulsion sauces", they listed

• temporary emulsions (e.g. vinagrettes)
• stable emulsions (e.g. mayonnaise)

However both of those examples involve high amounts of fat or acid.

For "dairy-based dressings", these seemed to rely on primarily cheese and cream, both of which are high fat.

Salsas it said tended to have fruits and/or vegetables combined with an acid (e.g. citrus juice, vinegar, or wine). Again, won't work.

So the options left were

• coulis and purees
• coating sauces: aspic

Would either of these last two options work? It seems plausible since the book doesn't mention high fat or acidity as a requirement for them, but I wanted a second opinion since I've never made either.

Answer 1

Yogurt comes in low-fat variations and in my experience they work pretty well.

Yogurt can be used as a dressing. In a lot of instances you can make a nice dressing just by taking the recipe of a mayonnaise based dressing and then replacing the mayonnaise with yogurt. (I don't mean it will taste the same, just that the recipes will produce a still nice but different tasting dressing.)

Also something like a traditional Greek Tzatziki is a real nice dressing.

For spicy-ness look at adding fresh garlic, horse radish or onions.

Here's a nice recipe: Get some no-fat yogurt, some mustard, honey and garlic, add salt and pepper to taste. You now have a real nice base to work off. It's a really fresh flavor because of the yogurt but also full because of the honey and garlic.

Answer 2

Acids and spices are generally used to add flavor to the mostly flavorless salad.

To adapt recipes for your relative, you could try:

• Use less sauce or dressing. Of cause the fat content of a dressing is high, but if you drizzle just a little bit over the salad, the overall fat content is much lower. Use less sauce to reduce the absolute amount of fat.
• Use oils with a strong taste. You'll need much less oil and can greatly improve the taste of a salad if you use oils with a strong taste like sesame oil, walnut oil or peanut oil.
• Add herbs or spices instead of oils. That's how the capsaicin usually gets into a salad, but there are very tasty alternatives: salt, parmesan or a similar grated cheese, oregano, garlic or bears garlic, chives, basil leaves, mint leaves, cress, coriander leaves or finely chopped fennel all add taste to a boring salad without any fat. There are so many more ingredients you could use that the combinations are endless.

Answer 3

You can work with sweet and salty tastes. A cold soy sauce and mirin/honey mixture is sure to add some good flavours to a salad.

You can also crush garlic and ginger, fry it up, then add soy sauce, honey/sugar/mirin and a corn starch slurry for a teriyaki style sauce you can dress your salad with after it's cooled.