Gram's French Dressing

My Grandma Shirley passed away last week and I thought it only fitting that after a break from posting, one of her classic recipes should get me back on blogging track.

There were five things that stand out in my mind that she made really well: pound cake, barbecue beef brisket, lime jello with pineapple, ice box cookies, and this American-style french dressing. As a kid I thought it particularly good because it was sweet, tomatoey, and went great with the hard boiled eggs and croutons that I would douse in it. If I felt like being good, I might scoop a spoonful of peas in it too.

Seeing that it is an obnoxious 96 degrees here in Minnesota, I was pleased that I was able to whisk all the ingredients for this together in about 5 minutes.

For a crazy large amount of dressing:

• ½ cup wine vinegar (I used red wine vinegar)
• ¼ cup water
• 1 cup sugar
• ½ cup ketchup
• 1 can tomato soup, undiluted
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder
• 1 tablespoon salt
• ½ tablespoon pepper
• 1 tablespoon mustard*
• 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
• 1½ tablespoons onion flakes
• 1½ cups vegetable oil (I used canola oil)

My Gram kept the directions short and sweet on this recipe so, here they are verbatim:

Whisk all the ingredients together and store in the refrigerator. Will last a long time. Makes a lot.

* The Chef and I debated what "mustard" meant. Dry? Dijon? In the end, we decided to use plain yellow mustard and it tastes as I remember it so I'm guessing we are right.