4 Ideas for Making Tasty Oil-Free Salad Dressings

There’s no denying that a good vinaigrette can transform a simple salad into a tasty, gourmet dish. However, oil is not an essential ingredient. Honey, yogurt, roasted nuts, ponzu sauce… Here are our 4 alternatives for preparing great salad dressings without oils!

Oil helps bind ingredients together and create an emulsion. To replace it, honey has no shortage of assets. Mixed with balsamic vinegar and old-fashioned mustard, it creates a perfect blend that will be perfect with blanched vegetables, grilled peaches and torn burrata for example. You can choose a discreet honey like a spring flower honey or with character like chestnut honey according to your preferences.

For more texture, you can add some kernels, walnuts and toasted seeds like pumpkin or sunflower seeds.

Yogurt can act as a binder, especially if accompanied by an acidic food like vinegar or lemon juice. This base helps create a consistency similar to that of a Caesar sauce, but with the acidity of yogurt, which you can lighten with a little water instead of olive oil. Perfect for firm salads like lettuce, iceberg or kale.

This is a well-kept chef’s tip for making a sauce creamy: mix cashews, almonds, pine nuts or hazelnuts with water, tahini, lemon juice and garlic and you will get a very smooth and creamy salad dressing. You can also add fresh herbs like basil or dried tomatoes to give it a “pesto” side. To give a more pronounced nutty taste, roast them for a few minutes before mixing.

If you don’t yet have this Japanese sauce in your cupboards, this may be the opportunity to adopt it. You can even prepare it at home by mixing zest and juice of lemons, limes, oranges, grapefruit and yuzu (if available), with soy sauce or tamari, dried seaweed (kombu) and dried mushrooms (shiitake and porcini). ). After boiling and steeping overnight, add mirin, sake and sugar, then reduce slightly to make a sticky, glossy dressing. This sauce goes perfectly with fish tartars and ceviches.