The 2-Second Fix To Take Some Of The Struggle Out Of Salad Prep

Imagine you're in the middle of meal prepping a big batch of salad for the upcoming week, knives and cutting boards out. Now comes the dressing-making part. You pull up a new recipe, and alas, the instructions call for a hand mixer. You frantically clear your counter and rummage your kitchen drawer for the equipment, unsure why the metal whisk has been separated from the handheld apparatus in the first place. 

There's no doubt that homemade dressings can elevate a salad to a level unmatched by store-bought alternatives. Making dressing from scratch provides complete control over the ingredients and free rein over the flavors. However, with this power comes responsibility over prep and cleanup. And anyone who's attempted to make homemade dressing, be it a cream or a vinaigrette, knows how heavy-duty this process can be.

One meal prep master has a simple yet genius hack to prevent this familiar scenario from discouraging your homemade dressing endeavors.

Instead of taking the traditional route of mixing the dressing ingredients in a bowl, food blogger Merlyn Miller offers a simple yet ingenious alternative: Shake them up in a jar.

Where to begin with the benefits of the jar method? This hack spares the labor-intensive agony of whisking by hand or the nuisance of assembling, disassembling, and cleaning an electric mixer. Not to mention, the sealed jar locks in all the ingredients and prevents splashes of oil from fatally staining your clothing or shoes. After adding each of the dressing ingredients your salad-loving heart desires to the jar, giving it a good few seconds of vigorous shaking to emulsify. After tasting for flavor deficits, you can leave the dressing in the jar for storage and use as you please. It's a solution that cuts out extra bowls — and thus cuts out extra dish washing time. And jars store easily, too; you can pop one in the fridge and simply shake it up again when it comes time for later use.

Not to mention, as Merlyn writes, "using a jar is also, quite simply, cute. It's a fun way to get kids involved in the kitchen — they'll enjoy shaking the vinaigrette up for longer than is necessary — and there's something satisfying about sliding that homesteader-esque jar of dressing onto your fridge shelf." 

Blogger Merlyn Miller isn't the only one advocating of shake up the dressing-making drill as we know it. A brief Reddit search introduces a whole thread of DIY dressing enthusiasts who swear by the jar method. In a post from 2019, one user complained about the oily residue left over after blending the dressing in a food processor and the sloppy procedure of pouring the dressing from a conventional plastic container to the salad, seeking advice from the cooking thread members. To this user's luck, many other Redditors suggested the jar method. 

One commenter, for instance, claimed, "You can put everything in the Mason jar and just shake it all together to get it reasonably emulsified. You can then just store it in the jar in the fridge." Another commenter insisted, "Glass is easier to wash free of oil than plastic, and it is easy."

With the simple and minimal base ingredients required, this hack solidifies how easy making homemade dressing can be. Prepping a delicious, fresh salad may seem like a daunting task, but small steps like this make it easier to add the healthy dish into your weekly rotation.