Is it “blue” or “bleu” cheese?
From my experience, if I sit down at a mom & pop place off main street – I’m more likely to see “bleu” cheese on the menu. Buffalo Wild Wings is blue cheese. But Hooters is bleu cheese. Who’s right?
Instead of relying on my unreliable anecdotes, I asked the Internet. Grammarphobia writes that bleu is a “Frenchified” version of the word blue that became commonplace on menus in the 1940’s. Essentially, in an attempt to make blue cheese dressing sound fancy, they went with a French translation of the word.
For the sake of calling it what it is, I have and will continue to sit on the “blue” cheese side of the fence.
Blue cheese dressing will always have a tendency to get gloopy if you aren’t careful to thin it out. You don’t want to taste the mayonnaise, and more importantly, you don’t want that dreaded too-thick texture. Creamy dressing should coat lightly, but be heavily flavored. There should be a pervasive blue cheese flavor, with a lot of garlic, of course.
The base for all my dairy-based dressings start with my musts – milk, vinegar, vegetable oil, mayonnaise and sour cream.
Then come the flavor enhancers. Some combination of garlic, lemon juice and Dijon mustard will usually make their way into every creamy dressing I make. You need them. With blue cheese dressing, you only really need to add Worcestershire to give it that savory punch, but I can’t help myself and other things inevitably end up in there.
Here’s an ultra-yummy dressing that goes great with the classics – buffalo wings & wedge salads – but if you haven’t tried it before, it’s a delicious complement to simple ripe red tomatoes. I could eat an entire bowl smothered in the stuff.
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I N G R E D I E N T S
Makes 1 1 / 2 pints.
- 1 / 2 cup Hellman’s mayonnaise
- 1 / 3 cup whole milk
- 1 / 4 cup white vinegar
- 3 tablespoons sour cream
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon pepper
- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- 4 oz. Amish blue, or another sharp blue cheese, plus 2 oz. additional
- 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
D I R E C T I O N S
- Mix all ingredients together in a food processor and whir until the garlic is completely incorporated and no chunks remain. Stir in the remaining blue cheese and store in a mason jar.
- Set in the fridge for as long as possible so the flavors can mingle with each other. The dressing will last 7 to 10 days in the fridge.