This is Highly recommended, a column dedicated to what people in the food industry are obsessed with eating, drinking and buying right now.
I bought first this sesame dressing because of my awe of that Kewpie Brand. (They put MSG in mayo! Respect.) The speckled, miso colored liquid looked sugary sweet at first – like something Newman’s Own – but where was that limp plastic bottle that I love, hate ?! This came in a jar and called me from the shelves of the Japanese supermarket I was in. When I saw “Kewpie” in all caps on the label, all I needed was to carefully place it in my shopping basket. It was a guarantee of delicious things, an invitation to the Kewpie lifestyle.
Now, a few months after living this #Kewpielife, I always have at least two bottles in the fridge.
It is nectar of the umami gods. It’s super hearty, thanks to soy sauce and sesame seeds (and surprisingly without MSG), balanced with tangy vinegar and brown sugar. But my favorite thing about this salad dressing is that it has body. It’s not one of those thin, salty, bite-sized vinaigrettes; It’s cloud-like and creamy toum. This makes eating my vegetables feel less virtuous and more forgiving.
A generous splash of this sweet and savory liquid gold gets me out of my lunch break and brings up moist lentil scraps and my thousandth serving of roasted broccoli. This dressing has replaced the ranch for all of my raw veg (healthier snacks!) Needs and will be making its debut at picnics in the park very soon. Most of the time my husband brings out the bottle for everything we eat from fried salmon to Mille-Feuille hub.
At BA, we tend to go into exaggeration when talking about things we like, but that’s the only way we can talk about this sesame dressing. On the Kewpie side there is 2,458 (and counting) glowing ratings. Some have compared this salad dressing to The Empire Strikes Back (“you can’t imagine life without it”). Some reviewers are actually just desperate customers looking for a solution because their Costco has stopped selling giant jugs of it (to which I would like to reply: “You can buy it right here on Amazon. ”).
There’s just one thing about this spicy-sweet sesame-stained dressing that thousands of us can’t shake off. It brings a little joy wherever it goes, and you will notice when it’s gone, which due to my two-bottle rule mentioned above, it will never be in my house.
In the meantime, I’ll be browsing the shelves of my Japanese supermarket looking for the next kewpie spice to add to my collection.
