Herby Buttermilk Ranch Dressing

Everyone needs a good recipe for great ranch dressing, right? This one is easy, fresh, and packed with flavor. It’s really good served very cold—either draped over crisp greens or as a dip for veggies. My current favorite way to have it is shown above: a simple iceberg (yes!) salad with sliced grape tomatoes and bacon. Simple can be so good.

Yield: 8 servings (serving size: 2 tablespoons)Author: Ann Taylor PittmanPrint Recipe

Herby Buttermilk Ranch Dressing

prep time: 10 minscook time: total time: 10 mins

Confession: I like ranch dressing. Not the bottled stuff, which I think is pretty bland. No, I mean homemade buttermilk ranch. I like it loaded with fresh herbs and with a little bite from fresh garlic, which is what makes it so good. I also like it served very cold over equally cold crisp greens like romaine (when it's not being recalled), Little Gem lettuce, or iceberg lettuce, which I've recently rediscovered. The recipe here is for the dressing alone; the salad shown is just a serving suggestion. You might want to go ahead and double the recipe; it's a good thing to keep on hand.

ingredients:

• 1/2 cup whole buttermilk
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise (I use Duke's; I'm Southern...)
• 2 Tbsp. chopped fresh chives
• 1 Tbsp. chopped fresh dill
• 1 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar
• 2 tsp. chopped fresh thyme
• 1/2 tsp. kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
• 1 small garlic clove, grated on a Microplane

instructions:

1. Place all ingredients in a medium bowl; whisk until well combined. I like to chill mine until very cold before serving, about an hour or so.

NOTES:

Calories 111; Fat 12g (sat 2g); Protein 1g; Carb 1g; Fiber 0g; Sugars 1g (added sugars 0g); Sodium 183mg

Created using The Recipes Generator

Slow-Roasted Salmon with Orange-Olive Salsa

Yield: 4 (serving size: 1 fillet and 1/4 cup salsa)Author: Ann Taylor PittmanPrint Recipe

Slow-Roasted Salmon with Orange-Olive Salsa

This slow, gentle roasting technique might just become your new favorite way to cook salmon. The low heat (only 250°F) keeps the flesh super-unctuous and oily-rich, and pretty much assures you won’t overcook the fish. The accompanying salsa is the perfect partner, with its bright pop of juicy citrus and meaty bits of buttery Castelvetrano olives (can we all just agree that they’re the best olives?).

prep time: 20 minscook time: 20 minstotal time: 40 mins

ingredients

• 4 (6-oz.) salmon fillets (I used skin-on, sustainable farmed salmon)
• Cooking spray
• 1/2 tsp. kosher salt, divided
• 1/4 tsp. black pepper
• 2 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil, divided

• 2 navel oranges

• 1/2 cup coarsely chopped pitted Castelvetrano olives (about 16 olives)
• 1/4 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves
• 2 Tbsp. slivered shallot or red onion
• 1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper

instructions

1. Let salmon fillets stand at room temperature for 20 to 30 minutes to take the chill off. Preheat oven to 250°F.

2. Arrange fillets in an 11 x 7–inch baking dish coated with cooking spray. Sprinkle with 3/8 tsp. salt and black pepper. Drizzle evenly with 1 tablespoon oil.
3. Grate 1/2 teaspoon zest from one of the oranges; set zest aside. Remove peel and all pith from both oranges; slice between membranes to remove orange sections. Place sections in a medium bowl. Hold orange membranes over salmon in baking dish, and squeeze juice over fillets.
4. Bake fillets at 250°F for 20 to 25 minutes, to desired degree of doneness. (Mine were to my liking right at 20 minutes.)
5. Meanwhile, add olives, parsley, shallot, red pepper, orange zest, remaining 1 tablespoon oil, and 1/8 teaspoon salt to orange sections; toss gently to combine. Serve salsa with salmon.

NOTES:

Calories 397; Fat 27g (sat 5g); Protein 27g; Carb 11g; Fiber 2g; Sugars 8g (added sugars 0g); Sodium 538mg

Created using The Recipes Generator

OK, so maybe you’re not sold yet on this idea. Let me try to get you there… Have you ever bought some beautiful salmon fillets, anticipating that oily, silky, fatty-in-all-the-good-ways texture, only to overcook the fish (even slightly) so that the texture falls flat? Yeah, that won’t happen with this slow-roasting method. It cooks the fish ever so gently so that it never loses that buttery silkiness you crave.

This recipe is pretty simple—not too much technique to explain. The hardest part is maybe sectioning the orange?? But even that isn’t hard. Just cut away all the peel and pith, and then cut between the membranes to extract the sections. Like this:

After you’ve removed all the sections, don’t toss the membranes just yet. Hold on to these guys—

And squeeze them over the fillets in the baking dish, like so:

Then bake for a short 20ish minutes, and you’ll be delighted by the results. No. More. Overcooked. Salmon. I mean, just look at this texture!