Several years ago I discovered oil and vinegar wasn’t what you put on salad when you didn’t have “real” dressing. Use good oil and good vinegar and it was better than most store-bought dressings. “Good” doesn’t mean canola oil and distilled white vinegar.
Usually it’s extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar, but I’ve got about a half-dozen different vinegars in the cupboard. The folks at Nakano offered me a sample of their seasoned rice vinegar. I didn’t have any yet, so I took them up on it.
I’m not too thrilled that the Original flavor they sent me had high fructose corn syrup. But I have to admit I don’t ask to see the ingredients when I get a salad at a restaurant, so I figured I’d give it a shot.
And you know what? It’s pretty good. I did a really simple salad to make sure I was tasting the vinegar and not everything else I was adding. The one thing I did add was the Garlic Gold nuggets with Parmesan.
They got it exactly right on the label: light and tangy. I tried to come up with different words to say the same thing, but they nailed it.
If you don’t mind HFCS, they’ve got a half-dozen flavors to try. I’d rather stick with the Natural one, that’s just the vinegar and water. I can add my own flavors.
Hopefully they’ll start hearing from other people that we’d like their products better without the HFCS.
