5 delicious dressings that will complete your salads

We fancy salads all year round. They are fast, fresh, satisfying and offer us a lot of variety. However, the final touch for a salad to be delicious is the dressing. In addition, if we use it well, the dressing can serve to enrich the salad with the healthy fats of a good oil or some seeds, as well as to favor the assimilation of vitamins and other antioxidants from the ingredients of the dish.

Of course, in the same way that a good dressing can raise many points of flavor and nutritional power to any salad, if we exceed it we can also spoil it. Is about enhance flavors and add nutrientsNot to drench the salad with sauce.

Tips for dressing salads

The dressings, for the most part, added at the end of processing, at the time of serving. Although in the images that we see the salads are perfectly assembled, with all the ingredients placed aesthetically, it is best to mix everything well and that the dressing reaches all the ingredients.

In the case of a takeaway salad, it is advisable to take the dressing in a separate small container, already prepared, which we will shake to mix. This is especially important with lettuce or spinach leaves. In the case of a kale salad, we would look for the opposite effect, with the kale cabbage already massaged with the dressing. In coleslaw, it is best not to use other leaves or ingredients that break down in moisture.

In most of the recipes that I propose in this blog, the salads and other dishes have the corresponding sauce or dressing indicated. However, in the weekly menus it usually indicates simply “garden salad” or “seasonal” to remind you of the 5 importance of introducing raw vegetables into our day to day.

5 salad dressings

Below you will find our usual downloadable vegan weekly menuin which, of course, there will be no shortage of salads so you can start trying it now with any of the dressings that I present below.

These are 5 very different dressings, which can be interchanged according to your tastes, preferences and season of the year. to all of them you can add ground seeds flax, chia and sesame.

Also pto have an extra supply of proteinyou can include hemp seeds if you think they look good.

Stockfood

1. Citrus dressing

A salad with mango, pineapple or apple will go very well with a citrus dressing with the sweet touch of maple syrup. This dressing, with high vitamin C contentis ideal for when we consume legumes and other sources of non-heme iron, since it helps its correct assimilation.

The most typical ingredients would be:

Olive oil Orange juice Lemon or lime juice Arcesal syrup

Citrus juices here take the place of vinegar in vinaigrettes.

Variants:

If you add a teaspoon or a tip of Dijon mustard and a little soy sauce (eliminating the salt), you will have a wonderful mustard vinaigrette. Put nuts on it! The chopped nuts will be an extra contribution of omegas and healthy fats, in addition to giving it texture. Stockfood

2. Dressing with an Asian touch

The ingredients are the following:

soy sauce rice vinegar ginger sesame oil chopped chives

This sauce is thinned with water, and is usually finish with black sesame seeds. To get all the benefits of these seeds, it is convenient to break or grind them. Although it is traditional to use a suribachi and surikogi, you can do it with a seed grinder.

Variants:

you can dissolve a little wasabi or add chili flakes if you like spicy. If you have mirina type of rice wine used for cooking in Japan, is the time to put it to use.Obviously you can use olive oil, but I like to introduce flax oil, as well as sesame oil, because they are the ones that go best with these flavors. Olive oil is very Mediterranean and has a strong taste that does not always fit with East Asian dishes. Stockfood

3. Red fruit dressing

This dressing is a very popular vinaigrette and we can do it all year round, since we have had frozen berries in different formats for a long time. We can also make it with fresh raspberries, strawberries, blueberries or blackberries, each fruit separately.

It is very important, especially with raspberries, strain the juice or smoothie you make with the fruits of the forestso that we do not find nuggets if we do not like them.

It is a very easy vinaigrette to make:

We crush the fruits of the forest wellPassing them through a clean saga or through a fine strainer. We mix this with the typical ingredients of a simple vinaigrette: virgin olive oil, apple cider vinegar and salt.If we wish, we can give it an acid and citric touch adding a touch of lime or lemon juice. Stockfood

4. Fresh dressing with tzatziki-type yogurt

One of my favorite dressings is this very simple, Greek-inspired Fresh Yogurt Dip. Tzatziki is a sauce very easy to veganize, since it is enough to change the conventional yogurt for vegetable. I advise you to be a creamy yogurt or skyr type, without flavors or sweeteners. You will need to:

2 creamy vegetable yogurtscucumberdillextra virgin olive oilapple cider vinegargarliclemon juicepeppersalt

To prepare it, simply We beat the yogurt with the rest of the ingredients.

Tips:

If it comes out very creamy and dense, it will also be worth it for toasts and sandwiches.If you lighten it with water (and not with oil), it will be perfect for summer salads.In winter, you can change the cucumber for a handful of pitted seasoned green olives and a handful of basil. As you can see, the trick is to combine a main flavor (olives or cucumber) with an aromatic herb that fits it. Stockfood

5. Creamy cashew dressing

This dressing is ideal both for lovers of nuts and for those who like a creamy touch. Cashews are one of the most common bases for vegan cheeses, so if you like this type of vegetable cheese, you will surely love this dressing.

It seems to me that this dressing goes perfectly with the buddha bowls and the pasta and rice saladsgiving them a great touch.

The main ingredients are:

cashewsnutritional yeastspices like oregano and basilblack peppersalt

downloadable weekly menu

The theme of the week is salad dressings, so you can take the opportunity to make a good complete saladwhere in addition to a good portion of vegetables, add quality vegetable protein: tofu, legumes such as chickpeas and white beans, seitan or tempeh, the latter two grilled and well cooked.

With the dressing of your choiceyou already have a lunch or dinner fixed.

Download today’s weekly menu here.

For an extra dose of energy, don’t forget brown rice, potato or whole wheat pasta. In the sweet potato season months, this is another great option.