Low Calorie Salad Dressing Suggestions Please
 

I am on the hunt for a great low calorie salad dressing. I found one from a local restaurant that is oil and vinegar based and only has 10 calories per 2 tablespoons. It’s okay, but a bit vinegary for my taste. I typically like ceaser or catalina dressings. Any suggestions?

I was also wondering about the zero calorie salad dressings from Walden Farms. Has anyone tried them?

If you like creamy dressings, you can mix up a packet of dressing flavor (ranch, cesar, dill- in the dressing aisle) with greek yogurt (just the yogurt for rich dips, or add some buttermilk or I suppose water would work for salad dressings). This yeilds just a bit more calories (for 0% yogurt, about 75 calories per half cup, which I guess is a little less than 20 calories per tbsp), and takes great with veggies! It's also a great way to get more lean protein. I like eating it after weight training.

There are a lot of salad dressings you can make with various combinations of oil, vinegar, and spices- have you tried searching online?

I really love fat free italian dressing. A little goes a long way

If I'm lazy and going store bought, the two I usually buy are Trader Joe's Light Champagne Vinaigrette or Wishbone Balsamic Vinaigrette.

Otherwise, I make blue cheese dressing or a simple vinaigrette with whatever is on hand.

I like salt and pepper on my salad.

I like the ranch flavor from Walden Farms. It's not anything amazing but it's easy and I don't like to make my own. I'm too lazy! ;) Some people can't tolerate it so it's just a matter of how your respond and my liking it doesn't mean you will, but I sure hope you do. :)

I often eat salad without dressing. However I put lots of different veggies on my salad. i will also put 1/4 to 1/2 of an avocado on my salad. I find the fat helps keep me satisfied and I do seem to lose weight a a better rate f I eat some healthy fat regularly. If I have diced tomatoes (cherry/grape tomatoes cut in half) and some avocado and mix it into the salad well I don't miss not having dressing. Smetimes I will throw ona table spoon of cottage cheese and mix that in well also. The "juicey" part of the cottage cheese lends a dressing like creaminess. Also a fresh dashes of balsamic vinegar are a nice flavor boost and help "moisten" the salad.

I'm having a huge problem with creamy fat free dressings. Why do they have a slimy texture? It makes me gag just to think about it!

Rice wine vinegar is my "secret weapon" for making low-calorie dressings that require little or no oil. It's a much milder vinegar, so it makes a pretty good salad dressing just on it's own. I usually add a bit of sweetener (Splenda, xylitol, stevia, or nutrasweet) and whatever spices I feel like (from ranch dressing mix powder to garlic powder and lawry's seasoning salt...).

For a red french, I'll pour a bit of rice wine vinegar and sweetner in a bowl and add a squirt of ketchup or tomato powder.

Some champagne vinegars are nearly as mild, but other wine vinegars usually aren't.

I'll also do a buttermilk/ranch by diluting sour cream or my homemade yogurt with skim milk or almond milk until it's pretty runny but still has a little bit of body and I'll add ranch dressing mix powder to that. I buy ranch dressing mix powder in bulk and don't measure I just keep adding powder until the dressing is as strong as I like it.

The thinner the salad dressing the less it takes to coat the salad (but the more dressing mix because you want the consistency diluted, not the flavor).

I also will put my salad greens in a zip loc bag or tupperware container along with dressing and then shake to coat the lettuce. If you shake a salad instead of stirring, you can often use a lot less dressing.

So far ive only tried the Balsamic Vinegar by Walden Farms...its pretty good.
Just dont pour too much on then it starts to taste funny but overall pretty decent for no calories .

Newman's Own light dressings are tasty - I especially like the light lime. It isn't creamy, but it adds variety.

Bolthouse makes a line of Yogurt dressings that are divine! From Ranch, french, blue cheese, thousand island to ginger sesame and Mango vingerette..they are 35-45 calories for 2 tablespoons and no artifical stuff in em

Thanks everyone!

Have you ever tried eating a salad sans dressing? I always avoided salads because I found I didn't really care for a lot of dressings, but the expectation was that one would have dressing with the salad.

I decided to toss that out the window, and provided that my salads are just more than lettuce, I find that I LOVE a good salad without dressing (why waste the calories on something I don't like anyway??).

People think I'm absolutely nuts when I refuse salad dressing, but considering that I'm already going against the norm in the way I eat in order to maintain my weight I might as well add one more oddity to the mix.

I like the Maple Grove Farms Balsamic Vinaigrette, it's pretty mild but powerful enough for some twang in a salad, it's 15 calories for 2tbsp! I just use balsamic vinegar sometimes, but dilute it with a little water cause it's pretty potent, and mix some pepper and a dash of salt. Dunno if that's just my taste though :-)

I've got to shout out for Maple Grove Farms too. Lately I can't get enough of their Honey Dijon! It's delicious. And only 35 calories. The Raspberry Vinaigrette is quite good too.

they are slimy because they took out the fat required to make things creamy...they replaced it with other substitutes and/or chemicals and gives it that weird texture...i personally cant stand fat free dressings, yuck

ive tried their zero calorie ranch and their sugar free raspberry viniagrette...or perhaps i labeled them backwards, anyhow...the viniagrette didnt taste too bad but mentally i knew i wasn't eating REAL ingredients, just a bunch of raspberry tasting chemicals so it was kind of a turn off :( the ranch dressing, to me, tastes like light mayonnaise, probably because the ingredients list "egg yolks" pretty high up on the list...i didnt like it at all and, sadly, cant pawn it off on any of my coworkers either LOLOL

I am not sure if this is going to be an allowed website, but of these listed dressings I use three from Trader Joe. They are the Cilantro, Parmesan Ranch, and Champaign Pear. Someone on here recommended the spicy peanut, but I haven't tried it yet.

http://athleticmindedtraveler.com/bl...g-hall-of-fame

If you don't like Cilantro, you won't like the dressing. I actually add fresh cilantro to my salad and then use the Cilantro dressing. To me, the parmesan ranch doesn't taste a bit like ranch and maybe a little like parmesan, but I like it. It is mild and not sweet. The champaign pear has a bit of cheese in it - gornonzola maybe. It is a bit sweet and is yummy on pears or any fruit salad. My sympathy goes out to you who have no local Trader Joe.:(

The following is a homemade spinach salad dressing that I like. It has more sugar than I like so I cut it down by about a third.

http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/M...Salad-Dressing

I guess I am kind of picky about my salad dressing. I strongly dislike the super vinegar-y/tart or super sweet dressings. I have a refrigerator full of dressings that I have tried and hate because they are too sour.

I recently tried Lighthouse's Light Salsa Ranch in a southwest bison steak salad and it was pretty amazing!