Note from Heather: When I updated the images on this recipe, I added 3 green onions, chopped, used fresh ground black pepper, and used *gasp* bottled lemon juice. Don’t tell Bobbie 😉
Bobbie says:
This recipe for Simple Chunky Blue Cheese Salad Dressing and Dip was the result of the quest of a lifetime. I thought I’d share it so you can be armed and ready for incredible salads when lettuce season hits hard. It’s scrumptious as a dip for buffalo hot wings and celery sticks. Use a dish of itas the star of a raw veggie tray.
My love affair with Bleu Cheese Dressing began a few decades ago when my parents took my sister and me to our first dinner at a grown-up restaurant. You know the kind: you sit at a table and a very polite person comes to ask you what you want and then brings it to you, on real plates, and you eat with actual metal forks and knives. (Previously we’d only been to the kind where you go up to a counter and got something wrapped in paper or a Styrofoam box.) Dad and Mom took us to a steak house with dim lights and cloth napkins, and real candles on the tables. The salad that came with my steak was a wedge of iceberg lettuce drenched in a creamy white dressing. I had no idea how one was to eat a wedge salad, but after getting instructions from the parents on how to go about tackling it politely, I was sold. I don’t even remember what I thought of the steak, but ever after, blue cheese has been my salad dressing of choice.
Once I was grown up and into cooking, I was not happy with most bottled dressings, so I tried to make homemade blue cheese dressing that tasted like blue cheese. In so many, the blue cheese flavor was overpowered by other ingredients. Overpowered? Well, yes, I’ve tried many recipes for blue cheese dressing that only barely tasted of blue cheese. Those ingredients that did the overpowering are not found in this recipe. This makes about one cup, but is easily doubled or tripled.
Recipe: Simple Chunky Blue Cheese Salad Dressing and Dip
Ingredients
- 1/3 cup crumbled bleu cheese
- 1/3 cup sour cream
- 1/3 cup mayonnaise
- 1 Tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 1 large pinch white pepper (black is okay, too)
- 1 quick dash of salt
- Cream or milk to thin, if desired
Instructions
I always make my Chunky Blue Cheese Dressing in a glass pie plate, because the preparation method requires a flat surface to press against, and a pie plate gives you plenty of room.
Measure the sour cream and mayonnaise into the pie plate, then put about half the blue cheese crumbles in there as well.
Using a large fork, begin mashing the bleu cheese into the mayo and sour cream. Don’t just stir them
together – the idea here is to get the flavor of the cheese permeate the dressing rather than just being a creamy dressing with pieces of blue cheese floating in it. (Of course, you can do it in a blender/food processor, but then it’ll be overly smooth, and then you’ve got that machine to clean up, too.)
Once the sour cream, mayonnaise and blue cheese are mixed pretty well, add the lemon juice, pepper and salt, as well as the rest of the blue cheese crumbles. Mix it up well. That’s it.
At this point, it will be a nice, thick dressing, but it will thicken a bit more after being refrigerated for a while.
You can thin the dressing with cream, half & half or milk if you like a slightly thinner dressing, but go easy – you can always add a bit more, but you can’ take it back out if it was too much. Add milk or cream only a tablespoon at a time & stir well before deciding if you need more.
Since you’ve blended part of the blue cheese into the dressing very well, the flavor will be good immediately, but it will get even better after a few hours in the fridge. This should keep in the refrigerator for about week, although I’ve never been able to prove it. In my house it always does a vanishing act within a couple days.
Serving suggestions for Simple Chunky Blue Cheese Dressing or Dip
Make a Buffalo Chicken Salad. Toss chunks of cooked chicken with your favorite hot sauce, like you would use for hot wings (buffalo wing sauce recipe). Add this to a salad of torn lettuce and sliced red onion. Top with blue cheese dressing, add celery sticks on the side. Or use it on a buffalo chicken sandwich.
Top a Steak, Burger or Prime Rib. Yes, we’ve done this. Yes, it’s amazing. Beef and blue cheese is an unbelievable combination.
My favorite salad of all time is torn iceberg or romaine lettuce, thinly sliced red and/or green pepper & red onion, pickled beets, topped with real bacon bits and blue cheese dressing. (Oh, my…)
Bobbie Laughman is a freelance writer with delusions of normalcy, living in Gettysburg, PA.
