I try to avoid adding extra oil to my food. It’s not a nutritionally rich product and it’s a bunch of wasted calories. Oils are not whole foods so they don’t really fall into the healthy category (yes, even olive oil and coconut oil aren’t really healthy). So when I can make something without adding oil to it and it still tastes great, I’m a happy camper. There are plenty of good oil free salad dressings out there and I’m pretty sure there’s probably a vegan oil free salad dressing cookbook lurking on amazon or an e-book that someone has published. I hate store bought salad dressing, even before I was vegan, I wasn’t really a fan. It’s just not fresh and a lot contain chemical preservatives to extend the shelf-life
Oil-Free Balsamic Salad Dressing
- 2 TBS. water
- 2 TBS. balsamic vinegar
- 1 TBS. dijon mustard
- 1 TBS. rice wine vinegar
- 1 TBS. roasted raw almonds (ground) *
- 1 TBS. nutritional yeast
- 1 tsp chia seeds soaked in 1 TBS water for 5 minutes ** (you can sub ground flax seeds if you want)
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- Juice of 1/2 small lemon
- 1 tsp maple syrup (optional)
Put everything in a blender and blend well. Refrigerate.
* Roasted raw almonds – I sometimes make my own almond milk and therefore I usually have raw unpasteurized almonds. I buy them online from Bremner Farms Roadside Stand in California (http://shop.organicalmondsraw.com/). You could probably also make this with cashews also.
To make the roasted almonds, after soaking, put them in the oven at 350 degrees for 10-15 minutes. Then once they are cooled, put them in a flat blade grinder (you can use a coffee grinder – as long as you aren’t using it to grind coffee beans!). Then store them in an air tight glass container in the refrigerator and use as needed.
Soaking raw almonds is a MUST! I could go into great detail, but if you want to know why, check out this link from Frugivore.
**chia seeds – I add these because chia seeds are a little powerhouse of Omega 3, but also because they add a bit of bulk to the dressing. When chia seeds meet water, they gel up! You could use flax seed, but flax seeds must be ground before you eat them otherwise they just go right through you…whole! And then you lose much of the benefits of the flax seeds.
Happy Vegan Eats!