The Ingredient My Dad Swore Belonged In Salad Dressing

My dad has some interesting food preferences, many of them revolving around salad. For one thing, he doesn't mind day-old salad (which he calls "dead salad") and often uses it as a sandwich topping. For another, even as a third-generation Italian, he insists that salad comes after the main course, not before. He also feels that oil and vinegar is the only salad dressing option you should ever ask for at a restaurant, and he would never dream of buying a salad dressing, not even a high-quality one. Instead, he makes his own every single day (since salad, for him, is an integral part of every meal). When I was growing up, my very favorite dad salad was made with something he called ketchup dressing.

Ketchup (or "catsup," as my mom pronounced it) was not in heavy use in our house. We'd put it on burgers and fries on the rare occasions we ate them, and my mom would also use it to glaze meatloaf (which I hated). I'm not sure where he got the idea to use the tomato-based condiment with salads, but I'm glad he did, since ketchup dressing was pretty amazing. It was a little bit sweet, a big bit tangy (my dad is always heavy-handed with the vinegar), and since it already contained tomatoes, there was no need to add any to the salad. (As a kid, I loathed raw tomatoes, although I've since learned to tolerate them. Grudgingly.)

My dad isn't a big recipe guy, and he's not much for measuring. As salad dressing is more of an art than a science, though, measurements aren't crucial. Basically, all he does is squeeze some ketchup into a cup and add salt, pepper, and garlic powder. He then pours in a lot of red wine vinegar (the only kind in our household besides distilled white cleaning vinegar), stirs it with a fork (whisk, schmisk, who needs a utensil that takes up that much room?), and adds just enough oil to get it to stick together.

Yes, his recipe is a little informal and also probably way too vinegary for most people outside our family. As it turns out, though, there is a commercial version of ketchup dressing, and it's called Catalina dressing. It seems this stuff was created by Kraft as a bottled dressing in the early '60s, although numerous home cooks have reverse-engineered the recipe in the half-century since. A homemade Catalina dressing recipe may call for one part ketchup to two parts each of oil, vinegar, and sugar, but that amount of sweetener seems excessive when ketchup itself is already pretty sweet. Still, that's just my opinion — and my dad's. And possibly that of the Redditor who opts to just skip salad dressing entirely and squeeze straight ketchup over their salads. If they'd only have added vinegar to the mix, we'd have welcomed them as a long-lost cousin.