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Key Takeaways
- This dressing uses just two main ingredients: sour cream and jarred pepperoncini (plus a little splash of brine!).
- It’s creamy, rich, tangy, and zesty all at once.
- Use it not only for salads, but for roasted vegetables, sandwiches, grilled chicken, and more.
Every personality test I’ve taken pinpoints that I’m an orderly and rule-abiding person who’s a consummate organizer and prefers predictability and structure. “Just have fun!” and “Just go with it!” are the two most paralyzing things anyone can say to me.
That’s why I was highly skeptical when I saw Emma Laperruque’s Zingy Sour Cream recipe in her latest cookbook, Little Big Recipes. It’s a two-ingredient creamy dressing that breaks all the salad dressing rules.
“Salad dressing doesn’t need more than two ingredients. And I’m not talking about oil and vinegar,” she says. To that I replied, impossible! You don’t need to go to culinary school to know that the basic building blocks of any dressing include oil and vinegar. But I was so wrong.
Simply Recipes / Myo Quinn
Emma’s 2-Ingredient Sour Cream Dressing
Measure 1/4 cup sour cream into a small bowl and stir in a tablespoon of finely minced pepperoncini and a splash of its brine. Stir until combined, taste, and add salt or black pepper if needed.
Adapted from Big Little Recipes by Emma Laperruque
Emma’s faff-less dressing calls for a 1/4 cup of sour cream combined with a tablespoon of finely minced jarred pepperoncini, a healthy splash of its brine, and salt to taste. (I’m a black pepper fiend, so I always add a few grinds.) These are astute ingredients that are in essence the two key components of a dressing: there’s vinegar in the brine and plenty of fat (or oil) in the sour cream.
The only way to describe this dressing is whoaaa! Emma aptly describes it as so delicious that it “could make a cardboard box taste good.” It’s creamy and bright, as all salad dressings should be, and with pops of flavor from both the peppers and the pickling liquid.
And since both ingredients are stable, you can make a giant batch and keep it in the fridge all week, using it on any salad, any crudité-like snack such as carrot, celery, or bell pepper sticks, on roasted vegetables, sandwiches, chicken (my go-to, as you can see in the image above), and as Emma recommends in the cookbook, pizza.
BUY THE COOKBOOK: Big Little Recipes
Simply Recipes / Myo Quinn
