Giada De Laurentiis Just Shared the Easiest Vinaigrette

Salad dressings are surprisingly easy to make at home. We love highly-rated recipes like our Creamy Lemon-Garlic Dressing and Easy Homemade Italian Dressing to have on the ready to elevate any salad. And we may be adding this quick and simple Giada De Laurentiis recipe to our rotation. 

In a recent video on Giadzy’s Instagram page, the cook and host shared an easy vinaigrette to add to her daughter, Jade’s, salad. 

“I always make homemade dressing,” De Laurentiis shares in the video. “But today we have some leftover strawberry jam, and I saw this hack to make the dressing in it. Brilliant! Duh, why didn’t I think of that?” Using only three ingredients and her new-and-approved hack, it’s easy to recreate the star’s dressing with any scraps of jam you have at home—I know this because I do it all the time.

In a jar with leftover jam just barely coating the inside, De Laurentiis pours in extra-virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar and adds a pinch of salt right in the jar. She seals the lid and shakes it up to combine her ingredients. The result is a smooth vinaigrette, which De Laurentiis uses to dress a simple bed of greens. Both Giada and Jade gave this dressing the seal of approval, and we’re ready to try it.

We think this easy dressing will pair well with a simple spinach salad, no matter what fruit jam you use. De Laurentiis also recommends using this 3-ingredient concoction as a marinade for chicken, which is actually genius.

But this hack exceeds jams; there’s so many ways you can transform scraps from jars into dressings. Bobby Flay loves using leftover Dijon mustard for a savory vinaigrette. And you can use the rest of your peanut butter and turn it into our 5-minute smooth and creamy Peanut Dressing. All of these tricks will not only make you want to eat more veggies, but they’ll inspire you to skip the bottled dressing section at the grocery store. And that’s for the best, since pre-packaged salad dressings can be a surprising source of added sugar, saturated fat and sodium.