Honey Dijon Salad Dressing - Only 4 Ingredients!
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Salads are the perfect hot weather food. I didn’t start making my own salad dressings until fairly recently, but now that I have I’ll never go back to buying them at the store. Premade salad dressings are packed full of extra (mostly unhealthy) ingredients that homemade varieties are lacking. Today I’ll discuss why I like making my own salad dressings and one of my favorite simple recipes with only 4 ingredients.
Why make your own salad dressing?
Homemade salad dressings often contain just a handful of ingredients and taste a lot fresher than what you buy at the store. Like I said above, premade salad dressings contain a lot of extra ingredients to make them taste better and last longer. Here is an example of a premade honey mustard dressing:
This has over 15 ingredients compared to my 4-ingredient dressing recipe below! Premade dressings tend to have a lot more sugar, salt, and fat than what you can make at home. Also, many premade dressings are made with less healthy oils, such as soybean or canola oil, so making your own allows you to use more heart-healthy oils. Most people eat salads because they are healthy, but if you cover your salad in premade dressing, you may be getting a lot of unhealthy ingredients that your body doesn’t need.
A note about fat-free dressings: your body needs fat in order to absorb certain nutrients, like those found in all of the colorful veggies in your salad. If you eat a salad without any fat because you’re using fat-free salad dressing, you won’t absorb nearly as many of the nutrients as if you eat a dressing with a bit of fat. Therefore, I’d suggest using dressing with a bit of healthy fat, like olive oil.
Equipment
You can easily use a jar with a lid or even just a bowl to make your salad dressing, but I really like this container because it is super easy to measure ingredients using cups, milliliters, or ounces. It’s also much easier to pour the dressing onto your salad with the spout.
Honey Dijon Salad Dressing
Ingredients
- 1/3 cup (75 mL) olive oil
- 3 tbsp (45 mL) apple cider vinegar
- 2 tbsp (30 mL) honey
- 2 tbsp (30 mL) Dijon mustard
Instructions
- Combine all ingredients in a mason jar and shake well.
- Drizzle on your salad and enjoy it right away or store it in the fridge for up to 1-2 weeks (I recommend letting it warm up on the counter for 15-20 minutes before using).
If you’re aiming to reduce processed foods in your diet then salad dressing is one of the easiest things to start making on your own at home. A good salad dressing can make a big salad much more appealing even if you aren’t a huge fan of veggies. Do you have a favorite recipe for salad dressing? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below!
