Creamy Orzo Salad

I love to peruse the grocery store aisles looking for new products mainly for flavour combination ideas but from time to time I will buy a product that sounds interesting in the hopes of being able to clone it in the event we like it.  Two new flavours of Kraft dressing recently became available in our little corner of beautiful Ontario, Canada.  I seldom buy salad dressings as we prefer homemade but these flavours sounded interesting so I bought one of each.  The flavours were sweet onion and roasted red pepper with parmesan, both with no artificial flavours, cholesterol free, zero trans fat and low in saturated fat.

One of the salads served at our relative's annual pig roast was an orzo and watermelon salad.  It was a unique and unexpected combination.  Orzo is a delightful pasta to use as a salad base because it is naturally creamy.  I used orzo to make an easy, creamy orzo salad using the new Kraft sweet onion salad dressing.  The result was a light, creamy salad that was a sure winner!

Creamy Orzo Salad
recipe by:  Garden Gnome

2 cup cooked orzo
1 tomato, chopped
½ c broccoli, finely chopped
2 green onions, finely sliced
¾ c Kraft Sweet Onion dressing

Cook orzo to al dente.  Drain.  Measure out two cups of the cooked orzo and allow to cool.  Wash vegetables.  Chop the tomato.  Fine chop the broccoli.  Fine slice the green onions.  Mix vegetable into the cooled orzo.  Pour the salad dressing over the pasta mixture and mix well.  Serve.

Note:  Will keep well for 2 - 3 days in the refrigerator.

I really liked the flavour of the Kraft sweet onion salad dressing.  This should be a fairly easy salad dressing to clone which will give all the flavour without any preservatives.  Like many commercially made salad dressings, this salad dressing gets its texture from xanthan gum, something I will also use in the clone recipe.  Another ingredient of note is citric acid, often added to commercially made salad dressings to give a bit of tang.  Citric acid is something I always have on hand for home canning acidification of certain products.  The benefit of using citric acid over lemon juice in a salad dressing is not increasing the liquid volume as citric acid is a crystallized powder rather than a liquid.  I'll post the clone recipe I came up with shortly.