Bleu Cheese Dressing

This week's recipe: Bleu Cheese Dressing

(Yes, bleu not blue, 'cos I'm fancy like that.)

I'm visiting my mom in eastern Washington, so I brought the ingredients along and informed her that we'd be trying my dressing on the guinea pigs of our family. Sounded fine to her.

America's Test Kitchen shows up regularly in my email inbox and on January 30 (this year) it had this recipe in it. Sounded good. Sounded easy.

So here it is:

Bleu Cheese Dressing
Makes about 1½ cups

3/4 cup (3 ounces) Stilton cheese, crumbled
3/4 cup mayonnaise
6 tablespoons sour cream
1 1/2 tablespoons cider vinegar
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder

1. Combine all ingredients in food processor and process until smooth, scraping down sides as necessary.
2. Serve.
   

Dressing can be refrigerated in an airtight container for 1 week.

Well, I substituted bleu cheese for the stilton (not by choice, they only carry flavored stilton at Trader Joe's—who knew?). And something inside me really wanted to sub yogurt for the sour cream. But they didn't have any in a smaller-than-quart sized container, so I got the sour cream.

Next observation: if I put all of the ingredients and whiz them up until smooth, how do I end up with chunks of bleu cheese in there? Answer: I only whiz ½ cup of bleu cheese in with the rest of the ingredients and stir the rest in at the end—OR—I do as the directions state and stir in an additional 1/4 cup (one ounce) of crumbled bleu cheese at the end.

So, I did the latter: a full 3 ounces in the recipe as called for, plus an extra ounce crumbled stirred in. Which actually turned out to be 2 extra ounces crumbled in. And the bleu cheese I used was too creamy, I need a drier bleu (perhaps stilton is dryer? maybe use gorgonzola?).

(Nevermind that the original recipe—here—was for CREAMY Bleu Cheese Dressing.)

Further, this strikes me as something that would taste best the day after it's made. Don't you think? So, in the best world, I did step one, refrigerated it overnight, and used it (step two) the next day. In reality, I did the dressing in the afternoon and used it that evening.

How was it?

Good. Not great. Nothing spectacular. No one was standing on their chair at the dinner table brandishing their fork and proclaiming this concoction the savior of mankind. Or anything really like that.

Grandpa thought it was "pretty dang good," aunt thought it was "really good." I just thought it was unremarkable bleu cheese dressing.

I thought it lacked the punch-you-in-the-face component that I like about bleu cheese.

Yes, it was creamy. Yes—because I added the extra cheese at the end—it had chunks of bleu cheese in it. Yes, we could all tell that it was what it was supposed to be—bleu cheese dressing, not ranch.

And it was thick. Some may like that, but I wanted it a little thinner. Perhaps adding a little buttermilk (as omitted by the folks at cookscountry.com) would thin it perfectly.

Perhaps letting it sit will bring out the bite of bleu cheese.

But I'm not throwing out the recipe. Next time 'round: more bleu cheese (somewhere in the neighborhood of 6–8 ounces total), a little less mayonnaise, sub some (or all) of the sour cream for yogurt, and add a little buttermilk (tang + liquid).

Yes, that's the plan.