Wedge Salad with Creamy Black Pepper Dressing

Why This Recipe Works

Typically, black pepper dressing either tastes nothing like pepper, or it makes your eyes burn with too much spice—a common conundrum when working with raw black pepper. We certainly wanted to taste the black pepper and feel some fire, but adding a ton of freshly cracked stuff left us with a mouthful of chewy, acerbic pepper bits. To tame the intensity, we turned on the stove: We simmered coarsely ground peppercorns in the fat left from cooking some bacon for our wedge. Gently cooking peppercorns in fat tames their heat by pulling out the fat-soluble compound piperine, which packs that heat, leaving a more mellow pepper flavor but plenty of presence. We drained the mellowed peppercorns before adding them to a creamy and tangy—but not gloppy—base of olive oil, sour cream, mayo, buttermilk, Dijon mustard, and red wine vinegar.