Creamy Italian Dressing

I decided a few days ago to make my own creamy Italian dressing. It's one of my favorites, but I'd never before tried to make it at home. A quick search on Yahoo yielded between 758,000 and 6,820,000 returns, depending on how you phrase the question. Obviously, I'm not going to review every possible recipe, or even all of the minimum number offered, but I do examine the top dozen or so for common elements.

I often add a personal spin of one kind or another to the resulting recipe, thus making it my own. The result of all this is as follows:

Print Recipe

Suggested Equipment:

• Blender (whatever type you have and prefer)
  
• Common kitchen measures and tools
  

Ingredients:

1. Not absolutely necessary. You can use regular old olive oil!
   
2. If red wine vinegar is unavailable, you can use apple cider vinegar.
   
3. If white wine vinegar is unavailable, you can use distilled white vinegar.
   
4. Optional. Diabetics may prefer to use one packet of artificial sweetener, or no sweetener at all.
   
5. Or to taste...
   

Item		Amount
Oil	Olive, extra virgin1	½	cup
Mayonnaise	Sugar-free preferred; e.g., Duke's® brand	¼	cup
Sour cream	unsweetened	¼	cup
Cheese	Parmesan, grated	¼	cup
Vinegar	Red wine2	2	Tbs
More vinegar	White wine3	2	Tbs
Italian seasoning mix	Generic blend; e.g., Tone's® brand	1	Tbs
Sugar4	White, granulated	1	tsp5

Directions:

1. Choose your preferred sweetener or use none at all.
2. Combine all ingredients in a mini-blender, or if using a stick (immersion) blender, a container of suitable size and shape.
3. Blend until smooth.
4. Decant into a container suitable for dispensing dressings.
5. Refrigerate for a minimum of 2 hours - longer is better, to a point.

Makes about 1½ cup.

This dressing contains no preservatives, and so should be used quickly and continuously until depleted. Keep refrigerated when not in use. After one week, at most, I would discard any unused dressing.