I’m a blue cheese fan and I’ve noticed that people either love it or they hate it; there’s no in-between. Some people abhor the idea of eating moldy cheese – eeeeew!! Yet blue cheese has an extraordinarily pungent, savory, and concentrated flavor. Blue cheese lovers, read on!
My friend Joanne recently gave me her recipe for blue cheese salad dressing and it’s the best I have ever eaten and so simple to make. The dressing gets better with age and it lasts for a couple of weeks in the fridge. I like to use it on a classic “wedge” salad, the kind served at high-end steak houses: a wedge of iceberg lettuce, crumbled bacon, and blue cheese dressing. Simple! Over the years fancy baby green lettuces have appeared on the market and iceberg lettuce has taken somewhat of a back seat, considered to be pedestrian and boring among the sea of these fancier “party greens”. Yet iceberg is succulent, sweet, crisp, and crunchy and it has little crevices that coddle the dressing. It’s a lovely supporting actor that makes other flavors “pop” beautifully. I also use blue cheese dressing on a salad of romaine with baby shrimp, tomatoes, hardboiled eggs, and cucumbers. I’ve even used it on a baked potato – yum!!!
This dressing can be made in any amount; it’s the proportions that matter. I usually use a cup of each ingredient and two cloves of garlic and the juice of one whole lemon.
Blue Cheese Dressing
⅓ sour cream
⅓ mayonnaise
⅓ blue cheese
Minced garlic
Lemon juice
Crumble the blue cheese (if it isn’t already) and vigorously mix the ingredients together with a fork. Make it at least one day before you plan to use it and store it in glass jar. Blue cheese freezes quite well and in fact, I’ve noticed that after it has been frozen it lasts much longer in the fridge. I like the widely available Danish blue cheese for use in recipes because it is relatively inexpensive, crumbly, available, and the flavor is wildly complex and robust.
A blue cheese from Oregon won international recognition several years ago. The Rogue River Creamery’s “Rogue River Blue” was given the World Champion award at the World Cheese Awards in 2019. This was the first time ever a cheese from the United States took top prize in this contest and it competed against a record-breaking 3804 cheeses from 42 countries.
A judge commented “the flavor is exceptional, exhibiting blackberry, vanilla, hazelnut, chocolate, and bacon flavors”. Wow! Now I am absolutely curious! This cheese is available on their website. I’m gonna’ put it on my wish list for Santa. I hope that Santa likes blue cheese too and knows how to shop on the internet.