The best, easiest and healthiest yogurt salad dressing there is! Only 5 minutes to make.
Forget all the bottled salad dressings, full of weird things that you don’t actually want to eat. To make this dressing takes about 5 minutes, it tastes better than any dressing you could possible buy, it is healthy and clean, low-fat, low-sugar and versatile.
You can use this basic yogurt dressing for just about any kind of salad: leafy salad, cucumbers, broccoli or other veggie salad. You can even eat this as a dip, on top of hot cooked potatoes or in a chicken/vegetable wrap for instance.
How To Make a Basic Yogurt Dressing – Low-Fat, Healthy and Variable
This is a basic recipe for a yogurt salad dressing, I start here everytime I make it, but sometimes I change it slightly depending on the kind of salad I have, on my mood or whatever. You can enhance it by adding one grated garlic clove or one teaspoon horseradish, you can add some chili sauce or even ketchup or mayonnaise, you can change the kind of herbs, vinegar or oil you use according to your taste, and so on.
And if your children usually have their problems with eating salad, they will stop having any problem with salads after tasting this dressing, both my children love it and eat lots of salad everytime I make this dressing.
This is a recipe I could not do without anymore. We eat this dressing at least twice a week and actually never grow tired of it, the fact that you can change it so easily never lets it become boring.
Ingredients for the Basic Yogurt Dressing:
As mentioned above one of the best things about this salad dressing is its versatility. You start with a basic mixture of yogurt, onions, mustard and vinegar and you go from there.
You can add some oil or leave it out completely, you could add some syrup or replace that with other sweetener, you could use lemon juice instead of vinegar, use different kinds of mustard, different herbs, you could add just about any spices you like.
You can use low-fat or full-fat yogurt, you could use sour cream or smetana instead or even buttermilk.
How to change the basic yogurt dressing:
Add: 1 grated garlic clove or 1 teaspoon horseradish (for beets for example) or 1 tablespoon ketchup/ mayonnaise/ chili sauce.
Add: other herbs, like chives, coriander, dill etc.
Add: 1 or 2 very finely chopped anchovy fillets.
Add: 1 or 2 very finely chopped gherkins.
Replace: olive oil through other kinds of oil (you could even leave it out completely)
Replace: white wine vinegar through balsamic vinegar or red wine vinegar or any other sorts of vinegar.
Replace: regular mustard through Dijon mustard, grainy or sweet mustard.
Replace: maple syrup through honey, agave syrup or 1 teaspoon sugar or leave out completely if you are already using ketchup, chili sauce or sweet mustard.
Other favorite salad recipes:
Asparagus Salad with Hard-Boiled Eggs and Ham
Vegan Bulgur Wheat Salad with Chickpeas and Herbs
Simple White Cabbage Salad – Romanian Recipe
Spring Salad with Asparagus, Chicken and Strawberries
How To Make a Basic Yogurt Dressing - Low-Fat, Healthy and Variable
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Ingredients
- 150 g/ 2/3 cup low-fat yogurt
- 1 teaspoon mustard
- 1 small onion, red or regular
- 1-2 tablespoons white wine vinegar, to taste
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1-2 teaspoons maple sirup, to taste
- 2 tablespoons parsley
- salt
- freshly ground black pepper
Instructions
Chop the onion very finely.
Place the yogurt in a small bowl, add the mustard and stir well together. Add the vinegar, salt and pepper and the olive oil. Whisk until the mixture emulsifies a little bit. Stir in the onion and the herbs.
This will make enough to dress a large salad, you could double the quantities and keep the rest in the fridge. It will keep for 2 or 3 days.
How to change the basic yogurt dressing:
Add: 1 grated garlic clove or 1 teaspoon horseradish (for beets for example) or 1 tablespoon ketchup/ mayonnaise/ chili sauce.
Add: other herbs, like chives, coriander, dill etc.
Add: 1 or 2 very finely chopped anchovy fillets.
Add: 1 or 2 very finely chopped gherkins.
Replace: olive oil through other kinds of oil (you could even leave it out completely)
Replace: white wine vinegar through balsamic vinegar or red wine vinegar or any other sorts of vinegar.
Replace: regular mustard through Dijon mustard, grainy or sweet mustard.
Replace: maple syrup through honey, agave syrup or 1 teaspoon sugar or leave out completely if you are already using ketchup, chili sauce or sweet mustard.
I almost always use low-fat creamy yogurt, but you can take the full-fat version or Greek yogurt. Sour cream tastes great as well, but has a lot more fat.
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16 comments
Adina, you are so right. This basic yogurt dressing is much healthier than the bottled stuff. I love that it is versatile and can be varied according to your needs.
Thank you, Leslyn. I have only eaten the bottled stuff in bad restaurants and am always amazed that people like it, I find it way too sweet and slimy.
Adina,
I can’t believe that for so many years I was eating salads and store bought salad dressings thinking it was a “healthy” choice. Thanks for sharing your recipe so that we can see how easy it is to make your own salad dressing!
I’d love to convince as many as possible to renounce the bottled stuff. 🙂
What a wonderful idea and a great collaboration! I’m going to check it out. I am guilty of buying store bought dressing and every time I pick one up I would think that I should be making it from scratch. This yogurt dressing sounds wonderful, so easy to make, and so much better for you.
Thank you, Thao and I really hope you try this dressing. You can change it so much as to completely fit your taste.
this looks great and what a lovely blog you have
Thank you, Rebecca. That is nice to hear. 🙂
I saw this recipe on TasteSpotting and thought “oh, I want that!” When I clicked through the link I was delighted to find myself on your blog!
🙂 Oh, I am so glad to hear that!
I am looking forward to using your recipe on my broccoli salad. This is one thing I am happy about eating instead of dreading in summer diet days!
It is a great dressing recipe, Diann, and so versatile, you can do so much to change it according to your taste. I make it all the time, three times this week already.
We had found a bottled healthy yogurt dressing in Canada which isn’t available in the US. Now I can make my own. Thanks!
MLG
Thank you. It is so versatile, you can tweak it until it suits you perfectly.
A good sounding recipe but isn’t that a lot of onion?
No, it is just a small onion. You can take less if you don’t like onions too much, but I would not leave them out completely. Chop it as finely as you can, so it is not so dominant when you bite on a piece.