Does making your own salad dressing seem daunting?  I felt that way once too, but it doesn’t have to be.  It has been so long since I have bought salad dressing I can’t even remember the last time.  A friend shared an incredible salad dressing recipe with me, and once I learned how, I just didn’t go back.  It’s way faster and easier than you think.  All you need is a good blender (and sometimes you don’t even need that), a handful of ingredients, a good recipe to get you started, and some imagination to keep you going.   The possibilities are endless.   Since salad season is upon us I thought I would blog a few salad dressing recipes I’ve enjoyed, and before you know it, you’ll be making your own blends….and hopefully sharing them with me?

This poppy-seed dressing is naturally sweetened and you can pronounce all the ingredients, but as it has no preservatives, it doesn’t last endlessly in the fridge like store-bought salad dressing, but it’ll keep a few days.  If you don’t eat it all before then.

There is one make it ahead ingredient included in this recipe and that is mustard substitute.  Mustard can be irritating to the stomach and so I stopped eating it long ago, so for those of you that don’t eat it I will include this recipe but if you do eat mustard you would have to play around a little to get the amount right.

Mustard substitute recipe 

1/8 c. quick oats or brown rice flour

1/4 – 1/2 tsp. onion flakes

1 1/2 tsp. garlic powder

1/4 tsp. turmeric

1/2 Tbsp. coconut sugar

1/4 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. lime peel granules (or lemon granules)

1/4 tsp. malic acid ( ascorbic acid can be used, but the result will be slightly different)

1/4 tsp. citric acid

all these ingredients are can be purchased at bulk barn, or online at nuts.com

Place all the ingredients in a coffee grinder, and pulse until it is a powder.

Place in an airtight container and use as you would mustard powder.

So now that you have that made and stored for future use, you will be able to whip up a batch of poppy-seed dressing whenever you want.

Here’s what you’ll need:

an onion, some lemon juice, honey (if you don’t eat honey you could try substituting with agave syrup) Poppy seeds, your dry mustard powder substitute or equivalent, sea salt, and a vegetable oil.

Place all the ingredients except the poppy seeds, in your blender and blend, then stir in your poppy seeds and that’s it, it’s that simple.  You can eat it right away or put it in a glass jar in the fridge for later.

The first recipe I tried this on was a massaged kale salad,

but it has so many possibilities, including my Tangy Spring Salad.

Let me know how you liked it best.

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