Kraft Bacon & Tomato Dressing (1984)

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by yinzerella

I put this advertisement up on the DiS1972 Facebook page and folks lost their collective minds.

OK, maybe they didn’t lose their minds–but they let it be known that they really liked it. I don’t know why Kraft would discontinue the Bacon & Tomato dressing if people liked it so much.

In 2018 an unopened bottle from 1986 sold on ebay for $8.50!

I have so many questions.

What type of person wants to buy a decades-old bottle of salad dressing?
What are they doing with it?
Is it a part of a collection? 
If so, do they have it displayed?
How much time did they spend trying to find the bottle?

But, of course, this all comes down to this question: who the hell keeps a 35-year-old bottle of salad dressing in the first place? 

Press play and check out this commercial from 1983:

Anyway, DiS1972 Facebook fan Jason Kole did a little internet sleuthing and found this copy-cat recipe:

  • 9 medium vine ripe tomatoes
  • 1/2 cup red wine vinegar
  • 1 tbsp . Dijon mustard
  • 5 pieces of bacon and fat that comes from cooking around 2 Tbsp.
  • 1/4 sweet onion
  • 2/3 cup mayonaisse
  • 1/4 tsp . powdered garlic
  • salt to taste
Gut the 9 tomatoes ( you can use the outsides for stuffed tomatoes). Place the insides in a blender and blend until smooth. Add red wine vinegar, mustard, bacon and bacon fat, sweet onion, garlic, mayo and salt and blend again until mixed well. Serve within a few days.
I had to try it!
The only modification I made was to cut it down because I did not need cups and cups of salad dressing. And, per Jason’s smart idea, I put in whole tomatoes so there’d be some tomato bits.
The resulting dressing was a bit thinner than I would have liked (I didn’t know how I would thicken it), but it was pretty good. I agree with some of the Facebook commentors that it was like a smoky/bacon-y Thousand Island.
There were bits of bacon and tomato in there, although you can’t see them.
Plus, combined with lettuce and some homemade croutons, this tasted pretty damn close to a BLT! Since I have so much of this dressing left I think I will pick up some bacon and try it on some BLTs later this week. Maybe I’ll even go Californian and throw some avocados on it! 

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yinzerella

8 thoughts on “Kraft Bacon & Tomato Dressing (1984)”

  2. i remember this and what it actually was a tomato forward catalina with crushed bac’os in it ….. but it was actually pretty good and led to a whole lot of bacon salad dressings

  3. Hmm, did anyone else notice that in the commercial the dressing is almost a white color, like ranch, but in the pics it’s that pinky color? I wonder if they changed the color later to pink to make it more visually appealing? Even though I don’t recall really being into the Kraft B&T dressing, I’d be willing to try the homemade copycat version. I think homemade/fresh is always superior.

  4. “But, of course, this all comes down to this question: who the hell keeps a 35-year-old bottle of salad dressing in the first place?”

    My fiance doesn’t cook – the kitchen is literally a foreign landscape for her, although as of late that’s been changing. Anyway, about a year after we got our place, she had the day off and was bored – I was at work – and she decided to do me a favor and clean the kitchen. She was so proud of herself, too: She reorganized the cabinets with the dishes and pans, and then decided to reorganize the cupboard from top to bottom.

    “Look! I made everything easier for you because I put all of the small stuff in front and the tall stuff in back. Aren’t you happy?”

    I was not. I explained that other than washing dishes, a non-cook never moves anything around because the cook then can’t find it. She was upset because she genuinely thought she did me a favor. I don’t know what she did, but there were foods that I’d recently purchased that I could not find no matter what I did. The cupboards weren’t that big, but they might as well have been Area 51, because that stuff could not be found.

    We had the kitchen remodeled a few years ago – fifteen years later, in fact – and we had to clear out the cupboards so that they could be removed and new ones installed. Only THEN was I able to find things that had vanished into the void. I’m not kidding, either. Canisters of various spices and what-not, all with expiration dates so long ago that a kid born on those days was finishing high school. In perfect condition, too – all lost because of what she (lovingly) did.

    So I *totally* understand why someone might have a bottle of salad dressing for nearly four decades; they were probably victimized the same way I was. Here today; in another dimension tomorrow.

    1. You have put this into perspective for me.
      I probably have some canned goods stashed somewhere that I have completely forgotten about.

  5. I agree with Dana as to the “provenance” of the bottle of dressing. It doesn’t even need to be a hoarder. Occasionally, a can or jar of something will get hidden by other items in the pantry or placed in a box in the garage — to go through later — and forgotten. You’d be surprised what I came across when I cleaned out my parents’ house after they passed. I pity whomever has to clean out ours. ; )

    I’ll definitely try the copycat recipe — the bacon line was sooo good. Kraft also had a really good parmesan ranch and peppercorn ranch in the early 90s.

  6. Wow completely forgot about this bottled dressing- and recall it was delicious! Loved creamy horseradish-bacon dressing + all time retro favorite…. Green Goddess! All branded green goddess dressings had strong black pepper flavor.
    Btw-*Some elderly hoarder passed away + their enterprising relative decided to hawk every single item; even the decayed food. There clearly is a market for everything 🙁

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