Japanese Steakhouse Carrot-Ginger Salad Dressing

comparing 3 different recipes. 

Our family has a tradition to make birthday dinner your "favorite things" - and it means just that, the birthday person gets to pick whatever they want...and it doesn't have to go together. I will say that in years past we've had meals that consisted of KFC, crab rangoons, pizza, no vegetables, and lots of chips - now everyone is fairly good about coming up with somewhat of a balanced meal. Except there's Brooke, who just turned 13, and has picked out some things that really don't go together! So we are having beef stroganoff with make-your-own-sushi, crabby mushrooms and buffalo dip, Japanese salad and cheez-its....sounds good, right? Ha, yuck. Anyway...My sister is making or getting most of the meal, but I thought it'd be fun to try to make the traditional orange salad dressing we get when we go to a Japanese Hibachi/steakhouse for the salad - I think it's Carrot-Ginger so googled a bunch of recipes and experimented with 3 different ones  (I went and picked up a small thing of restaurant dressing so I have something to compare it to) and I think I got pretty close - here's the winning recipe:

1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup rice vinegar
2 Tablespoons soy sauce
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon grated ginger
1 medium carrot peeled and roughly chopped (I used baby carrots, about 4 ounces)
1/2 medium onion, roughly chopped
salt and pepper to taste

Put all the ingredients in a food processor, process until smooth. Chill until ready to use. Makes about 2 cups.

Note: this has a little texture to it, tiny little specks of ginger and carrot - you won't get it totally smooth and that's what you want. Serve over iceberg salad with shredded carrots and cherry tomatoes.

to use fresh ginger - buy the size you want (it's ok to break off a piece at the supermarket, you don't have to buy the whole thing...kinda like bananas). then remove the brown part with a vegie peeler and discard.

 different stages of the ginger - remove and discard the peel (on the right) and then grate it (on the left)

PS: there are a bunch of recipes out there that call for ketchup, celery, lemon juice...it doesn't taste like the one we are used to and isn't my favorite for sure - it just tastes like ketchup!