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My Kraft Pourables Review: Convenient, Tasty, and Low on Calories (#NewPourables)

Kraft PourablesYou know how some people get reeaalllly bored of drinking plain water even though it’s part of their “get healthy” plan? That’s how I feel about using the same salad dressing day in and day out. So when I was asked to try out four different salad dressings from Kraft, I said Send em’ on over!

The standby dressing in our home is one we make by mixing a good quality olive oil and balsamic vinegar together. But like I said, I get a bit tired of the same taste every night. In terms of calories, according to My Fitness Pal, I’m looking at 67 calories for 1 tablespoon. And the nutritional info for a homemade vinaigrette is shown below.

Nutritional Info for a Homemade Vinaigrette

In contrast, the Kraft Pourable salad vinaigrettes shown in the photo above are 25-30 calories for 1 tablespoon. They are also low in fat (1.5 to 2.0 grams), and the ingredient list includes fruits and vegetables.

However, with convenience often comes a trade-off, so I did a close read of the ingredient list. The first thing that I found was xanthan gum, which acts as a thickener and helps ingredients stay blended on the shelf. Despite its strange-sounding name, xantham gum seems harmless and is actually growing in popularity because it is a helpful ingredient in gluten-free baked goods. Corn syrup as an ingredient also raised my eye brows, but I have since learned that it is distinct from high-fructose corn syrup, which has been the topic of a spate of negative media stories as of late.

The nutritional info for my favourite Kraft vinaigrette (Garlic Parmesan with Roasted Cauliflower) is below. You’ll see that the Kraft recipe has far less calories (25 calories versus 67 calories) and fat (1.5 grams versus 7 grams) than the homemade one above, but note that it has far more sodium (115 mg versus 34 mg). Fat versus salt: The choice is yours, as they say.

Nutritional Info for My Fave Kraft Dressing: Garlic Parmesan with Roasted Cauliflower

After educating myself on the nutritional info and ingredients, I could now get to the good part — testing! The flavours for these four new Kraft Pourable salad vinagrettes are:

  • Berry Balsamic
  • Roasted Yellow Pepper, Garlic and Lime
  • Fire Roasted Tomato with Basil
  • Garlic Parmesan with Roasted Cauliflower

I really liked the taste of all of them, with my favourite being the Garlic Parmesan and my least favourite being the Berry Balsamic because no matter how many times I try, I just can’t seem to do fruity tastes with green salad. I just much prefer savoury with my veggies.

Pasta and Salad Night at Our House

One neat little thing that Kraft has done is to include extra recipe ideas on the side of the bottles for using these dressing for more than salads.

So when we were hosting a rather large gathering of folks recently, we decided on a casual BBQ menu with side salads. I made a green salad and used the Fire Roasted Tomato Basil dressing on it, the Looneyspoons’ Moroccan quinoa salad, and then took Kraft’s tip and added the Garlic Parmesan dressing to mashed potatoes. I made plenty of all three salads to ensure everyone’s bellies would be filled and that I’d have leftovers for lunches, but there was not a speck of the mashed potatoes left in the bowl!

So, the final conclusion on these salad dressings? I like them and will keep a few on rotation in our home fridge, and I suggest keeping one in the office fridge too for lunches. Sure, your colleagues will probably sneak some for their salads too, but you can consider it your own little contribution to boosting office morale.

P.S. This post if part of a much larger Kraft Canada campaign launching this morning, so if you’re interested in the reviews of other bloggers and how they used these dressings in other recipes,  they are all collected in one spot on Pinterest! (As we know, I’m not much of a cook, but some of my fellow bloggers are fabulous cooks!)

Disclosure: The products mentioned above have been given as part of a sponsored post through my ad network, SheBlogsMedia, for Kraft Canada, in exchange for being featured on Coffee with Julie. The opinions expressed in this post are mine and have not been influenced in any other way. 

Comments

  1. Completely agree re: the berry balsamic. If I want fruit, I’m going to use fresh fruit in my salad (trust me, it’s goooood when you use balsamic vinegar with a touch of extra virgin olive oil). Also, the dressings were much, much better as cooking sauces.

  2. Mmm… I kind of really want to try that berry balsamic one. I know it wasn’t your favourite, but I tend to love fruit flavours with anything, so I think even the name sounds amazing!

  3. Elizabeth L says:

    I love that you checked out all the ingredients! I am so good at doing that when buying for my daughter but so bad at checking out what is in what I am eating! I’m surprised that homemade dressing is so high in calories too.

  4. LifeInPleasantville says:

    I love that you took the time to really check out the ingredients. I scanned for sugar and salt and moved on 😉

    • Hi Candace! I’ve been following along on your blog and know that salt and heart health are connected now. Is there a certain amount that is considered “high” salt levels in a dressing?

      • LifeInPleasantville says:

        Hi Julie, The average adult is supposed to consume around 1500mg of sodium a day with 2200mg being considered the high end of the spectrum.The Kraft dressings we tried come in at around 115mg per tbsp. The highest sodium I could find for any Kraft dressing was around 150mg for the Balsamic Vinaigrette. Anything you buy with over 20% of your daily recommended allowance in it is considered high sodium. Dressings aren’t really the big concern though when eating at home if you’re making your own meals. The real killer is in the stuff you buy when eating out. It’s so insidious. We recently ate at Pad Thai Express, mistakenly thinking it was the “healthiest” option we had out of four restaurants to choose from. When we got home I checked the sodium content on the Chicken Pad Thai we had and it came in at a whopping 2,594mg, well over the high end of the sodium allowance and more than the daily recommended amount in one serving. I’ve always been a big believer in cooking at home but since my husbands heart attack I’ve become more aware of heart health and I’ve been pushing it even more.

        • This is really helpful! It means I can scan the nutritional label to under 20% sodium. (I can’t believe that sodium contnet for a single meal at Pad Thai Express! I’ve eaten there thinking it was the “healthy” option too!)

  5. WE bought the yellow pepper one in my house already and both the teen and me loved it.

    • Yes, I like the yellow pepper one too! I tried marinading chicken the other day and it was so easy to add so much taste! (Just put the chicken breasts in zip lock bag with the dressing and then baked them for 20 minutes at 400 degrees.)

  6. it’s so funny to read all these reviews and hear everyone’s opinion on the berry one. It was our fav – we’re berry people!

  7. I admit to skimming labels – you just did the job for me but much more thorough. I loved the Berry Balsamic, but they are all very tasty!

  8. I’m not a bottled-dressing kinda gal, but these are giving me inspiration on flavours to try with my homemade ones!

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