Get Dinner On The Table Quicker With This 2-Ingredient Hack For Creamy Dressing

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Any busy home cook would jump at the opportunity for a dinner shortcut, especially if it's as tasty and complex as a made-from-scratch recipe. One of Tasting Table's favorites utilizes staple condiments instead of store-bought salad dressing, saving you both money and time by combining a handful of liquid ingredients to suit the desired salad recipe. A TikToker took things even further by coming up with the ultimate creamy dressing hack that requires just two household staples: Hummus and pickle juice. Start with around a third to half a cup of hummus spooned into a bowl, then add about two spoonfuls of pickle juice directly from the pickle jar in, stirring to combine. The mixture should be deliciously creamy yet still fluid enough to drizzle and coat delicate salad ingredients like lettuce. 

Both hummus and pickle juice are complex, multi-ingredient condiments that supply a wealth of flavor to salad dressing. The vinegar, aromatics, and herbs that comprise the pickle brine are the tangy and spicy complement to cut through the richness of the earthy, nutty hummus. This ridiculously easy 2-ingredient hack is essentially a vinaigrette since the pickle juice supplies the acid and the hummus brings the fat with olive oil and tahini. Considering that tahini, a key ingredient in hummus, and pickle juice are also a simple two-ingredient veggie dip, you already know this combo will work brilliantly on salads.

The best thing about this two-ingredient salad dressing is that it's fully customizable without necessarily adding any extra ingredients at all. The array of different hummus recipes and even different pickles that exist are more than enough to create countless variations of a hummus and pickle juice salad dressing. A vibrant beet hummus and dill pickle juice dressing, for example, is a sweet and tangy accompaniment for a spicy arugula salad with walnuts, feta, and pear slices. A black bean hummus with pickled jalapeño juice, meanwhile, is a great dressing to drizzle over a vegan taco salad. We even have a great dill pickle hummus recipe that you can just add more pickle juice to for an herbal and tangy salad topper that could also double as a potato salad dressing too.

Tasting Table has plenty of recommendations for quality pickle brands that contain many different aromatic and herby flavor profiles. Check out our ranking of spicy pickles to bring a little zing to a hummus salad dressing. Don't feel like making it from scratch? Store-bought hummus brands abound, and they come in tons of delicious flavors. You could use Cedar's roasted red pepper hummus and spicy pickle juice to dress a Fattoush salad, while this 365 Whole Foods brand roasted garlic hummus and pickled caper juice would be a great alternative to Caesar salad dressing, not to mention it's vegan.