This honey dijon salad dressing is vegan, gluten-free, nut-free, soy-free, oil-free and you’ll want to eat it every day. Sometimes I do.
Packaged salad dressings are full of processed oils, preservatives, color additives, sodium, and refined sugars. All in an effort to replace the flavor and taste of homemade dressing. Today I wanted to share my top five reasons to make salad dressing from scratch, and this honey dijon recipe will get you started.
It’s just the right amount of sweet, savory, tangy and creamy with only 6 ingredients that can be mixed in the bottom of your salad bowl before you add your veggies, a true one-bowl recipe. If you are taking your lunch to work you can stir this up in the morning and carry it in a leak-proof container. When you get to work shake it a few times before pouring over your lunch salad. Perfecto!
Top 5 Reasons to Make Your Own Salad Dressings
- More Natural – Bottled dressings are full of preservatives, artificial flavors & colors, and a host of other chemical and processed ingredients. All these additives attempt to enhance and preserve the taste you would have with fresh dressing!
- More Nutritious – By using only fresh, whole, unprocessed ingredients the dressing goes from the potentially worst part of your salad to actually being good for you! Fresh lemon is extra alkalizing and helps your body to assimilate the nutrients from your greens.
- Better Taste – Homemade always tastes better, fresh ingredients create more complex and nuanced flavors.
- Cheaper – A bottle of organic natural salad dressing can run you more than $10 and last for only a few salads. Make this dressing from pantry staples and one serving will cost you pennies on the dollar, it’s so worth it!
- It’s Easy, promise – I promise you can whisk up these ingredients in the bottom of your salad bowl in the same amount of time it takes you to get that crazy plastic wrapper off the bottle cap of the store-bought dressing. Then just throw your salad on top and toss!
Vegan salad dressing that tastes like honey dijon but it’s homemade!
- ⅓ cup oil-free hummus
- 1 small lemon, juiced
- 1 tablespoon grainy mustard
- 1 tablespoon 100% pure maple syrup
- ⅓ teaspoon garlic powder
- ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
- dash of water to thin if needed
- Whisk all the ingredients together in the bottom of your salad bowl.
- Add your salad fixings and toss to serve.
For oil-free hummus I recommend Whole Foods brand or Engine 2 brand if you don’t have homemade.
If you have a sensitivity to chickpeas, or would like some extra hidden veggies in your diet, sub one medium peeled zucchini for the hummus and whir all the ingredients together in a blender. For extra creaminess you could also add a tablespoon of organic raw tahini (sesame seed paste) along with the zucchini.
Enjoy!
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