Behind the Kilner Jars: How We Build Our Salad Dressings from Scratch

A great salad lives or dies by what gets drizzled over the leaves. At The Wheelhouse, the team stopped buying shop-bought bottles years ago. A simple vinaigrette can lift buttery new potatoes into something celebratory, and a punchy herb dressing turns a plate of roasted roots into the dish people talk about the next day. Every jar that leaves the pass has been whisked, blended or shaken in the kitchen that morning, using the same pantry staples any home cook can pick up in Melbourne, Brisbane or a small town in regional New South Wales.

The logic is straightforward. Bottled dressings often taste flat because they are built to survive weeks on a shelf, which means heavy stabilisers, dull oils and a wallop of sugar. A scratch-made version tastes brighter, costs less per litre, and lets the kitchen react to what is good at the market that week. It also means a vegan guest, a coeliac friend or a child who refuses anything green can all be catered for without reaching for a packet.

The pantry philosophy behind every jar

The starting point is not a recipe but an oil. Cold-pressed rapeseed oil is the workhorse because it is mild, locally produced across the UK and holds emulsions beautifully. Alongside it sit a peppery extra virgin for drizzling, a small bottle of toasted sesame for Asian-leaning slaws, and a fridge-stable olive oil for the busy weekend service. Vinegars live in a row next to them: white wine, red wine, cider, balsamic, rice wine and a few aged bottles reserved for tasting menus.

The second shelf is where the character lives. Dijon mustard, wholegrain mustard, honey from a beekeeper in Stirlingshire, soft brown sugar, tamari, fish sauce, mirin, lemon juice, and preserved lemon from the cold larder. Fresh garlic, shallots and ginger live in a labelled container so anyone on the team can build a base in seconds. A small tin of salted capers and a jar of cornichons sit beside a tub of mayonnaise that is, itself, made in-house each Tuesday.

This kind of set-up mirrors the organised home pantries you see behind the bench tops of cooking schools in Adelaide and Sydney, where a few good staples are worth more than twenty half-finished bottles. The rule of thumb is one acid, one fat, one emulsifier, one sweetener, and one signature ingredient. From there, anything goes.

A vinaigrette that actually holds together

The most useful dressing in the kitchen is also the simplest. The classic ratio of three parts oil to one part vinegar holds in a French kitchen and works just as well beside the Forth and Clyde Canal. Dijon mustard is whisked into the vinegar first until it loosens into a paste, then the oil is added in a thin stream while the whisk keeps moving. A small spoon of honey rounds the edges, a finely chopped shallot adds bite, and salt and cracked black pepper finish the job.

The team batches this in a litre Kilner jar every morning, gives it a hard shake and labels it with the date. Because the mustard acts as the emulsifier, the dressing stays glossy for hours on the pass. It is the dressing that goes on the house side salad, the lentil and roast squash plate, and the grilled aubergine during peak summer service.

For a brighter version, the same base is built with lemon juice instead of vinegar, finished with chopped parsley and a few scrapings of lemon zest. This is the one that ends up on pan-fried sea trout and on a simple rocket and parmesan bowl that has become a regular order among regulars walking up from the Falkirk Wheel visitor centre. Anyone who has eaten a similar dressing at a wine bar in the Barossa Valley will recognise the logic: let good oil and good acid do the talking, and do not crowd them.

Creamy dressings, made the slow way

Shop-bought Caesar, ranch and blue cheese dressings tend to be loaded with thickeners and preservatives. Making them from scratch is a quiet luxury that takes less time than most people imagine. The base is always a freshly made mayonnaise: egg yolk, mustard, a splash of white wine vinegar, salt, and a slow drizzle of oil until the mixture turns glossy and thick. From this single base, three very different dressings appear on the menu throughout the week.

The Caesar gets its depth from anchovies pounded with garlic, a splash of Worcestershire, the zest of a lemon, and a handful of finely grated Parmesan. The ranch is built with soured cream, buttermilk, chives, dill, parsley and a touch of garlic powder, kept thin enough to coat a leaf without drowning it. The blue cheese version folds crumbled Stilton through the mayonnaise with a spoon of the poaching liquid from the cheese, thinned with a little cream and sharpened with a few drops of lemon. Each is held in the fridge and used within forty-eight hours, which keeps the flavour clean and the texture lively.

The same approach travels well into a kitchen in Perth or Hobart, where cultured butter and good cream are easy to find. A jar of homemade mayonnaise in the fridge is a quiet cheat code for a busy week, and it gives the home cook a head start on everything from a quick coleslaw to a steak sandwich.

Herbs, flowers and the wild card shelf

A dressing does not need to be complicated to be memorable, but it does need something unexpected. The kitchen keeps a wild card shelf of soft herbs, edible flowers and seasonal pickles that change every fortnight. In spring, that means chive blossoms, sorrel and wild garlic. By midsummer, basil, mint and nasturtium petals. Autumn brings bronze fennel fronds, flat-leaf parsley and shiso. Winter leans on tarragon, thyme and the last of the preserved lemons.

These get used in concentrated ways. A spoonful of chopped tarragon stirred through a lemon and mustard dressing turns a green bean salad into something that feels French country bistro. Shiso leaves blended with soy, rice vinegar and a touch of honey make a punchy Asian dressing that lifts cold poached chicken. Pickled rose petals from the garden, drained and chopped, get folded through a raspberry vinaigrette for the dessert menu.

A small corner of the prep bench is also given over to native ingredients, in part because the team enjoys the challenge. Lemon myrtle steeped in warm olive oil for ten minutes gives a eucalyptus lift to a simple vinaigrette. Wattleseed is dry-toasted, ground and added to a honey-mustard dressing that pairs with grilled lamb. A few drops of finger lime pulp scattered over an avocado and crab salad adds a citrus pop that is impossible to buy in a bottle. These touches cost almost nothing but turn a familiar plate into something a bit special, the same way a splash of Tasmanian manuka honey might sweeten a mustard dressing in a home kitchen in Fremantle.

Pairing dressings with the seasons beside the canal

The Wheelhouse sits a short walk from the boat lift, and the menu shifts with the rhythm of the year. In the deep midwinter, when the canalside is wrapped in mist and the boats are quiet, the kitchen leans into heavier leaves like kale, chicory and radicchio, which take well to creamy, anchovy-rich dressings and warm bacon vinaigrettes. A Sunday roast plate is finished with a punchy mustard and honey dressing over roasted root vegetables, the kind of plate that pairs with a glass of Barossa Shiraz as easily as it does a Central Otago Pinot.

By late spring, the menu turns greener. Asparagus, peas, broad beans and the first strawberries ask for a lighter hand. A dressing built on white wine vinegar, olive oil, chopped mint and a little caster sugar gets drizzled over a salad of new potatoes and radishes. Summer brings tomatoes in their full sweetness, and the kitchen responds with a basil and caper dressing that would feel at home at a long lunch in a Melbourne back garden. The dressing is never an afterthought. It is part of how the season is announced on the plate.

Bringing the scratch habit home

The good news for home cooks is that the same habits work in any kitchen. Buy one good oil, one good vinegar, a jar of Dijon and a lemon. From that small kit, ten different dressings can be made in the time it takes to boil a kettle. Build the base in a small jar, season aggressively, and taste with a leaf of whatever salad is going on the plate, not a spoon. The leaf test catches the balance issues a spoon never will.

For those who want a deeper dive into how the team builds menus around these ideas, the festive Christmas menu guide walks through the same principles in a holiday setting. Curious cooks who like to understand the maths behind flavour pairings often enjoy a wander through probability explained through casino maths, which the head chef keeps bookmarked for slow Tuesday afternoons. Dressing bottles, glassware and Kilner jars can be sourced through suppliers such as Baremoor, and the current list of gift cards, afternoon tea vouchers and tasting menu experiences lives on the offers page, ready for the next celebration around the corner.

A salad dressing made from scratch is a small, daily act of cooking well. Once the habit is in place, the bottles on the supermarket shelf start to look expensive, dull and a little unnecessary. The Wheelhouse kitchen will keep on whisking, shaking and tasting its way through every season, and the next jar to leave the pass is always only a few minutes away from being finished.