It's so easy and quick to make your own salad dressings. I'm sharing a very basic dressing which I use for most of my salads. I add other ingredients to it depending on the particular salad. You may notice that I haven't used vinegar - that's because my husband can't tolerate vinegar of any sort but I've included other options below.
Basic Salad Dressing GF SCD
6 tblsps extra virgin olive oil
2 tblsps fresh lemon juice or 1 small lemon
½ medium clove garlic crushed (1 small clove)
freshly ground sea salt and black pepper
It's a good idea to save your jam jars for mixing the dressings.
Pour the oil into the jam jar and add the lemon juice.
Add the crushed garlic, freshly ground sea salt and black pepper then shake well.
At this point I always have a little taste to see if it's too acidic, adding a little more oil if I think it is. That's it - simple!
Options :
- Instead of the extra virgin olive oil use walnut or hazelnut oil, for example. This works really well if you are including nuts or seeds in the salad.
- Use apple cider or wine vinegar instead of lemon juice.
- Use balsamic vinegar instead of lemon juice (not SCD).
- Replace some of the lemon juice with a teaspoon or more of honey or other liquid sweetener for a sweeter dressing.
- Add a teaspoon of dry mustard powder.
- Add more or less garlic to your taste.
- Add dried or fresh herbs.
- Add spices.
I've varied the basic dressing depending on the salad ingredients in these salads:
- Roasted Apple and Carrot Salad - I used a little less oil because the vegetables were roasted in oil and replaced 1 tablespoon of lemon juice with honey which is sweet yet acidic, then I added the mustard to give it a little kick!
- Cucumber, Bean, Mint and Apple Salad - the fresh herbs added to the dressing made earlier in the day gave it a greater depth of flavour.
- Black Bean Salad - I added some honey to this dressing instead of some of the lemon juice as well as fresh herbs.
- Bean Salad with Mint - extra garlic worked well with this salad dressing.
- Green Lentil Salad - I added extra lemon juice and garlic in this dressing since it worked really well with the lentils.
Sometimes though, all a salad needs is a little drizzle of a good oil and a scattering of fresh herbs to give it a lift.
