Homemade Salad Dressing

I know it may seem like an extra step that isn’t really worth it, but making your own salad dressing can transforms a blah salad into a fabulously tasty one. These five recipes cover most of your basic flavor profiles for vinaigrettes and there is even an alternative to ranch.

Salads can get a bad rap for being cold, unappealing diet food but I love luxurious salads with tons of flavor and all the fixin’s you can imagine. As vegetarians, salads aren’t just that measly teaser before the main course arrives. They are full bodied, nutritious multi-dimensional meals.

The problem is, until I started making my old roommate convinced me to make my own dressing, salads never felt like a practical thing to make at home because I don’t really like the store bought dressings. You may not know this, but most of them are chock full of hydrogenated oils (linked to cardiovascular disease) and corn syrup (linked to diabetes). And even if you do find that one variety that pleases your taste buds and has all the right stuff in it, it’s often $6 a bottle.

So I know making your own salad dressing may not be the first thing you had to check off your cooking list but trust me, it’s worth it. It will make you enjoy eating those healthy greens more which will help you stick to any weight loss plan you’re on.

All of these salad dressing recipes can be made ahead of time and stored in the refrigerator for a while.Toss out the commercially made, globby mystery sauce and replace them with these healthy and delicious alternatives.

For all of the recipes combine ingredients in a food processor or whist together by hand. If you’re going to manually mix them you will need to chop the ingredients into fine pieces to prevent chomping down on a whole clove of garlic.

And remember the finer the ingredients you put in, the better the dressing you’ll get out. This is especially true for the olive oil. I tend to keep one bottle of nice olive oil for dressings and one cheaper variety for cooking purposes. The cheaper ones tend to have a strong off-putting taste.