Thousand Island Dressing

There are a lot of upsides to being married to CaveBoy. He's fun and adventurous and the extrovert of the family (which is important because if making new friends were left up to me, we'd only know CB and Rachel). He's committed to health and wellness, and he always wants to be and do his best. He's a great police officer and always thinking about my safety. The list goes on...

But there is one downside. CaveBoy has a shift-work schedule that doesn't mesh with my normal eight-to-seven (yea, I work a lot too...). So we take advantage of every opportunity to spend time together (even if it is only a few hours between when he gets home and I pass out from exhaustion).

Recently, our restaurant-filled (read: closes at 10) neighborhood sprouted a hand-full of bars - and more than one Irish pub - that keep the kitchen open past midnight. So we've spent our two-hour dates sampling the new atmosphere, checking out the drink prices, and tasting the late night menus. Nobody bats an eye when I order my normal 1800 and soda with lime. But you can imagine the look on the bartender's face when I add to that a breadless reuben with no cheese (yes, I just want a pile of corned beef and sauerkraut on a plate, is that so much to ask?).

For the most part, I haven't been disappointed. But in one or two cases, the corned beef was too salty and I know the thousand island dressing is chock-full of soybean oil. So I decided to take the cooking into my own hands. The corned beef and sauerkraut are the easy part. But how do you make a creamy dressing without dairy or a bunch of other crap? Here's how...

Thousand Island Dressing

No artificial nothing!

Ingredients

1 egg
About 3/4 cup lite olive oil
1/3 cup diced (dill or sweet) pickle
4 tablespoons pickle juice
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon lemon juice or white vinegar
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon stone ground mustard
1 teaspoon raw honey
1/2 teaspoon garlic
Salt and pepper

Instructions

This recipe is a three-step process. You need to pasteurize your egg (safety first!), make your mayonnaise, then mix your dressing and chill. Luckily none of the steps take too much time (except maybe the chilling).

For the mayonnaise, I like this recipe. It works every time! My immersion blender came with a solid cup, so I can't use it to measure my ingredients. Instead, I use the cup of a small Blender Bottle. You can use anything, as long as the immersion blender fits all the way to the bottom without too much space on the sides, and a one cup volume is marked on the side. If you don't own such an object, take a plastic cup that fits your immersion blender, measure one cup using your baking equipment, and mark it yourself with a sharpie. 

Egg pasteurization is optional, but I recommend it! I use the instructions from Baking Bites, with a minor modification. I don't own a digital thermometer, so I use my analog version. The trick is to keep a close eye on the temperature and adjust the heat in slight increments throughout the three minute process.

Once you have a cup of (safe) paleo mayonnaise, you're ready to mix your Thousand Island Dressing. In a small bowl, combine the tomato paste, pickle juice, vinegar, honey, garlic, and a few shakes of salt and pepper. Then fold in your mayonnaise and diced pickle. Chill for a few hours before serving. Makes about 2 cups.

I recommend serving like this

Seriously, who needs bread?