This is the outlier of the dressings on this site, and the reason is that there is no mayonnaise, no cheese and no dairy in it. It is roasted peppers and roasted garlic blended smooth with olive oil and vinegar, so it comes out deep orange-red, silky rather than creamy, and sweet in a way that has nothing to do with added sugar. Roasting is doing all of the work: it collapses the pepper's raw green edge into something jammy and pulls the harshness out of the garlic entirely.

Budget about 30 minutes, most of it hands-off while the peppers blacken under the broiler, and five minutes at the blender at the end. It dresses four generously and it also works as a sauce for things that are not salad, which the mayonnaise dressings do not.

Equipment

Peppers roast best in something that takes direct broiler heat without warping and holds the juices that run out of them, which is worth catching because that liquid is concentrated pepper flavor: the Enameled Cast Iron Roasting Pan takes the heat and the enamel means the juice does not react with bare metal. This is the one dressing on this site that genuinely wants a machine rather than a whisk, because the texture you are after is completely smooth and roasted pepper skin and pulp will not break down by hand, so the 8-Cup Food Processor With 2 Speeds Plus Pulse is the right tool and the pulse setting matters for the first few bursts. Because this is a low-acid vegetable and garlic mixture held in oil, storage is a safety question rather than a convenience one, so it goes straight into a sealed Le Parfait Super Jar and into the refrigerator; more on that below.

Ingredients

• 2 large red bell peppers, about 12 ounces total
• 4 garlic cloves, unpeeled
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper, freshly ground
• Kosher salt, to taste

Ingredient Selection

Red peppers, not green, and it is not a preference. Green bell peppers are the same fruit picked unripe, and they stay grassy and slightly bitter no matter how long you roast them. Red ones have converted their starch to sugar on the plant, which is where the sweetness in this dressing comes from. Orange and yellow work too and land slightly milder.

You can use jarred roasted peppers and the dressing will be perfectly good, but know what changes. Jarred peppers sit in a salted brine, so they arrive already seasoned and you should salt at the very end and sparingly. They also taste flatter, because a lot of what makes a home-roasted pepper interesting is the char, which does not survive jarring. If you go that route, drain them well and pat them dry.

Roast the garlic in its skin alongside the peppers rather than adding it raw. Raw garlic in a blended dressing turns sharp and then bitter as the blades break it up, and it keeps getting stronger over the days it sits. Roasted, it goes sweet and soft and disappears into the base.

Smoked paprika is doing a specific job here, which is reinforcing the char you got from the broiler. Sweet paprika will not do the same thing. If you dislike smoke, leave it out rather than substituting.

Method

Mise en Place

1. Heat the broiler and halve the peppers: Set an oven rack in the top position and heat the broiler. Cut the peppers in half through the stem, pull out the stem, seeds and pale ribs, and press the halves flat so they sit skin-side up. Flat halves char evenly; whole peppers need turning and blacken in patches.

Roast

1. Broil the peppers and garlic until the skins blister black: Lay the pepper halves skin-side up in the pan with the unpeeled garlic cloves tucked between them. Broil until the skins are blistered and blackened across most of the surface, about 10 to 15 minutes. You want them genuinely black, not tan, because that char is the flavor and the blackened skin is coming off anyway.
2. Steam them in a covered bowl: Move the peppers to a bowl and cover it tightly for 10 minutes. The trapped steam lifts the skin away from the flesh, which is what makes peeling take seconds instead of being a fight.

Peel and Blend

1. Peel the peppers and squeeze out the garlic: Slip the blackened skins off with your fingers and do not rinse them under the tap, which washes away the flavor you just spent 15 minutes building. A few stubborn black flecks left behind are fine. Squeeze the roasted garlic out of its skins.
2. Blend the peppers, garlic and seasonings first: Put the peeled peppers, any juice from the bowl, the garlic, vinegar, lemon juice, Dijon, smoked paprika and black pepper in the processor and run it until completely smooth, scraping down once. Getting this smooth before the oil goes in matters, because pepper skin and pulp will not break down once they are coated in fat.
3. Stream in the olive oil with the machine running: Pour it in slowly through the feed tube while the processor runs, until the dressing turns glossy and slightly thickened. Added slowly it emulsifies and stays together; dumped in at once it sits on top and separates within the hour.

Finish

1. Taste, salt and adjust: Taste it now and only now add salt, because roasted peppers are sweeter than you expect and the amount needed varies with the peppers. If it is thicker than you want for a salad, thin it with water rather than more oil, which would flatten the flavor.

Serving and Application

On a salad it suits sturdy leaves and grain bowls better than delicate ones, because it has body and it will weigh butter lettuce down. Where it really earns its place is off the salad plate: spooned over grilled chicken or white fish, tossed through roasted vegetables, stirred into couscous or farro, or used as a dip for bread. It is closer in spirit to a Spanish romesco than to a salad dressing, and it behaves like one.

Popular Variations

• Romesco-style: Add a small handful of toasted almonds and a slice of stale bread to the processor before the oil goes in. This is the classic Catalan direction and it turns the dressing into a proper sauce.
• Spicy: Roast a red chile alongside the peppers, or blend in a chipotle in adobo for smoke and heat together.
• Creamy version: Blend in a couple of tablespoons of Greek yogurt at the end for something paler, tangier and thicker. It also shortens the keeping time, so make what you will use.
• Herb-finished: Pulse in fresh basil or parsley at the very end, in short bursts only, so the herbs stay flecked rather than turning the dressing muddy brown.

Make Ahead, Storage and Reheating

This one has a real storage rule and it is not about freshness. Garlic and low-acid vegetables held in oil create an oxygen-free environment, which is the condition Clostridium botulinum needs to grow. Oregon State University Extension's publication on herbs and vegetables in oil is explicit that homemade flavored oils of this kind, pesto included, must be refrigerated and used within 4 days or frozen for longer storage. Treat this dressing the same way: into a sealed jar, into the refrigerator at 40F or below straight away, and used inside four days. Do not leave it on the counter, and do not keep it a week because it still smells fine.

It does freeze well, better than any other dressing in this batch, because there is no dairy or egg emulsion to break. Freeze it in a jar with headroom or in an ice cube tray, and thaw in the refrigerator. It may separate slightly on thawing; a short blast in the processor or a hard shake brings it back.

It will thicken cold and the olive oil may cloud or solidify, which is normal. Let it sit out a few minutes before serving.

History

There is no origin story to tell here, and I would rather say that than invent one. Roasted red pepper dressing is a modern restaurant and home-cooking item without a documented inventor or a founding moment, unlike ranch or Thousand Island.

What it does have is an obvious ancestor. Blending roasted peppers, garlic, oil and vinegar into a sauce is the basis of Catalan romesco, which is a genuinely old preparation from the Tarragona region traditionally served with grilled spring onions and fish. Strip the nuts and bread out of romesco, loosen it with more vinegar, and you have essentially this. Calling it an American invention would be generous; it is a thinned, simplified version of something Mediterranean cooks have made for a long time.

Nutrition

An estimate, calculated ingredient by ingredient from USDA FoodData Central entries by hand rather than measured in a lab. The recipe makes about 1 1/2 cups, and the figures are given per 2 tablespoons rather than as a share of the batch.

References

• Oregon State University Extension Service: Herbs and Vegetables in Oil (SP 50-701), on botulism risk and the 4-day refrigerated limit
• FoodSafety.gov: 4 Steps to Food Safety, on the 40F to 140F danger zone and the 2-hour rule

Related Guides

The closest thing to this on the site is Chimichurri, the other oil-based dressing here that carries the same herbs-and-garlic-in-oil storage rule and the same four-day limit, for exactly the same reason. For the opposite approach to the same salad, Ranch Dressing gets its body from dairy where this one gets it from a blended vegetable.

Thank You

Thanks for going to the trouble of roasting your own instead of opening a jar. If you push it toward romesco with the almonds and bread, I would like to hear how far you took it, because that is the version I keep coming back to. Drop me a note through the contact page. More dressings are on the way, so say which one you want next.

Chef Alan
Wine Drop Cookery
35 years, Six Four Diamond Awards