What is Russian Dressing?
A sauce made with mayonnaise, ketchup and horseradish, seasoned with Worcestershire sauce and paprika. It has a thick, smooth texture and a spicy, rich flavor. It’s an essential ingredient in a Rueben sandwich and can also be used as a dressing for salads or as dip for fried seafood.
What does Russian Dressing Taste Like?
Sweet is one of the five main tastes. It has smooth and round notes in its flavor profile. Sweet is a naturally occurring flavor in many foods, including fruits, berries, winter squashes, sugarcane, and honey. The sweet taste in these foods is due to a higher sugar content. Sweetness is characteristic of desserts and is used as an accent in savory foods.
Spicy is a flavor that brings heat and fire to food by creating a burning sensation in the mouth or sinuses. Spicy flavors come from hot peppers, horseradish, and wasabi. Spicy adds a kick and sometimes complexity to a dish and releases endorphins, creating a mildly addictive quality.
Ingredients
Mayonnaise is a cream colored condiment and thick sauce, or spread. Mayonnaise is made by slowly adding oil to a mixture of raw egg, vinegar and seasonings, until it thickens. This is done by continuously whisking. The flavor is mild, tangy and a bit salty with a comforting quality from the creamy texture. Mayonnaise is a multi-use ingredient for sauces, cold meat salads, sandwiches and more.
Ketchup has had a slow evolution towards the tomato based condiment we know today, and was originally a Chinese fish sauce. Tomato ketchup has a thick but squeezable consistency, that spreads and mixes effortlessly. The color of this tomato, vinegar, and sugar based sauce is red. The flavor is sweet, tart and umami. Ketchup is a popular American condiment used on french fries, hamburgers, hotdogs and much more.
Horseradish is a large root that is used as a spice. The woody root is in the same botanical family as mustard and broccoli. Horseradish can grow over three feet in length and is long and round, with a medium width, white body. Horseradish is grated and used fresh, or dried and turned into wasabi powder. There are multiple ways of using this hot and peppery root, whose heat is experienced not on the tongue but in the sinuses. Horseradish can be commonly found in Asian, Jewish and Eastern European foods.
The onion is a bulb vegetable, meaning its bulb and not its leaves are eaten. Onions come in many varieties, including white, yellow and red. Shallots are small and mild onions. Vidalias are sweet, while red onions are strong and sharp. The onion is usually round and has a thin dry skin around its juicy layers. This skin depends in the color of the onion, as does the flesh. The flesh, or body of the onion is made of multiple round layers, that get smaller towards the center. The flavor of onions are sharp and sweet when raw, with an astringent taste. When cooked, these flavors mellow and the sweetness emerges. Onion are a very common flavoring and ingredient for many savory dishes.
Hot sauce is a thin spicy condiment made from hot peppers. The heat level can be mild or scorching, depending on the types of peppers used. The color is often orange or red, some are green. The texture is slightly thick, but pours easily. The flavor can be hot and vinegary, or hot and smoky, among many other variations. The one characteristic that unifies all hot sauces, is that each one has some level of heat. It is used to add a spicy hotness to everything from tacos to fried rice. Hot sauce is typically paired with Latin and American dishes, but is an applicable condiment for many cuisines.
Worcestershire sauce is a condiment used primarily in the cooking process and less as a topping. It is a fermented liquid made of vinegar, soy sauce and seasonings. It is dark brown with a thin viscosity. The flavor is savory, salty and umami with a hint of sweetness. It is primarily used with meats.
Paprika is a spice made made not from one type of pepper but from multiple varieties of sweet peppers and chili peppers. Common paprika is not spicy, but some paprika will be mildly spicy if hotter peppers are used. The pepper is dried and ground into a fine red power used to season savory dishes. The flavor is both sweet and pungent with a hint of bitterness that can emerge when it is cooked.
Salt is a mineral composed mostly of sodium chloride. It is the main flavoring used in food and is naturally occurring in certain foods, such as cheese, beets, meat and celery, plus many others. Salt is white and has finer granules than sugar. Many commercial salts include iodide, while others exclude it. Most salts are white, while some are naturally pale pink with minerals. Salt brings out the flavor of something and can create a tangy mouthfeel, if used in excess.
