Here there! Welcome to my final blog post for the year!
I wanted to share some salad dressing recipes with you, for you to use over the holiday period (and all year round really!).
My goal is to use vegetables for fresh flavour that’s easy and delicious for your holiday meals.
That way we can spend more time enjoying the meal and each other’s company, than we do preparing complicated dishes.
We have a wide range of delicious leafy green vegetables available at Goldbush and a simple, quick way to use them is in a green salad, but let's not make it boring!
A Green Salad isn’t difficult at all (no doubt you have made one in the past) and works using the greens and vegetables from Goldbush, or equally as well with bought veges too.
If you're using kale in a salad, I highly recommend chopping the kale leaves quite small (stripped from the stem), add a splash of olive oil and a pinch of salt and massage with your fingers, this reduces the tough chew factor for raw kale and helps it take on the dressing.
Chop or tear your other greens, any combo will work, the more the merrier!
Lettuce, Sorrel, Chard, Spinach etc etc. and add to a large bowl, the larger the better, making it easier to add in any other bits you want to add such as cucumber, olives, cheese, snow peas, tomatoes and spring onions, then toss in your dressing, see below for my favourites.
These vinaigrette dressing recipes are available to download below, if printing do page two only, to save on ink.
6 Delicious Ways To Dress A Salad
First choose which one you want to make, gather your ingredients and place them all in a jar for a good shake up or use a blender or stick whizz. Your vinaigrette dressing will taste better after a few hours or overnight as the flavours get a chance to meld together. It should be well seasoned but slightly acidic so once it’s on the salad it will be perfect!
Goldbush Vinaigrette Basic recipe
¾ cup olive oil
¼ cup apple cider vinegar
2 Tbsp lemon juice
½ tsp salt
Black pepper
If it’s too tangy for you (depends on your taste and also the ingredients) add 1 or more teaspoons of honey or maple syrup to sweeten, taste after each addition. Use as a dressing on any kind of salad you like, or try a few modifications to make one of the dressings below. Make sure you experiment to find ones you and your family love.
Herby Vinaigrette
1 clove crushed garlic (or ⅓ tsp garlic powder)
1 tsp onion powder
¼ tsp oregano (or use 1 tsp fresh finely chopped)
⅛ tsp thyme (or use ½ tsp fresh finely chopped)
⅛ tsp parsley (or use ½ tsp fresh finely chopped)
Add all or a combination to the basic mix.
Balsamic Vinaigrette
Swap out the apple cider vinegar for balsamic vinegar, it won’t need as much sweetener as the basic.
Ginger and Lime
Replace lemon juice in the basic recipe with lime juice. Add 2 Tbsp sweet chilli sauce and 1 tsp freshly grated ginger.
Honey Mustard
Add 1 Tbsp liquid honey and 1 Tbsp wholegrain mustard.
French Dressing
Replace the vinegar with white (or red) wine vinegar. Add 1 clove of crushed garlic and a heaping teaspoon of Dijon mustard (I promise it’s worth finding proper French stuff - they sell it at Countdown and it’s worth the slightly higher price).
This recipe makes quite a lot of dressing but it does keep well for a week and when you’re looking for a quick lunch just chopping some tomatoes and cucumbers and tossing in a dressing can make a boring lunch delicious! So use it everywhere, or just halve the recipe.
I hope you have a wonderful time and get to relax at least a bit over the holidays!
Click on the picture below to download the recipes above, only print page one if you want a concise one-page recipe card (which also saves ink!).
