Salad Dressing?
 

Just curious what kind of salad dressing you all use? I am so sick of fat free italian that I can't see straight. I have had zero luck finding a good low point ranch. I would LOVE to find a good low point honey mustard if anyone knows of any.

I LOVE Newman's Own Balsamic light. It's 45 calories, so that must be 1 point. It's really good!

I make my own. I googled "salad dressing recipes" and found thousands of recipes. I looked for those that could be made very low calorie, and I experimented.

Especially handy for experimenting, I found little "tupperware" style containers in a dollar store. They only hold 2 ounces (about 4 tablespoons), and came 6 in a package - I bought 2 packages. This way, if an experiment "went bad" I only wasted a couple ounces, not a pint.

Most salad dressing recipes though; make a cup, pint, or even quart or more. That's WAY too much dressing, unless you're making it for a crowd. At first I used a calculator to try to cut back the recipes precisely, but learned that you do not have to be precise with a salad dressing - the dash and guess method works just fine.


I substituted canola, olive, or nut oils for the oil.
I substituted Hellman's Canola or Olive oil mayonaisse for full-fat mayo (both have 50 calories per tablespoon, but do not taste "light")
I substitute Splenda for other sweeteners
And perhaps most importantly, I substituted rice wine vinegar for other vinegars. A decent asian rice wine vinegar is much less sharp/acidic that most vinegars, so you can cut the amount of oil, sometmes drastically. A no-oil dressing made with regular vinegar tastes pretty terrible (in my opinion) but an oil-free dressing made with rice vinegar is surprisingly good.

One example of a really good dressing (that also makes a good "dipping sauce for meats, such as chicken), is based on a thai style salad dressing (replacing Palm sugar or tamarind water with Splenda).


1 tablespoons fish sauce
1 1/2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
2 garlic cloves
Splenda to taste
1 - 2 red shallots or half a small red onion chopped
1 - 2 bird’s eye chillies (to taste) or any chillie finly minced
1 tablespoons chopped cilantro

You can also take whatever dressing you want and diluting it with a couple of things--

1st. Fat-Free Miracle Whip
2nd. Water
3rd. Balsamic Vinegar

Any or all of the above can stretch out any dressing and make it lower calorie.

Oooh had never thought about making my own! From looks of the recipies you all posted here and the ones I Googled, it sounds so easy even I could make it! Thanks guys!

Because they're so cheap, quick and easy, I only buy bottled salad dressing at most maybe once a year,except for Hidden Valley Light Ranch, it's practically the only salad dressing hubby will eat (which I don't get, because I buy a ranch dressing powder in bulk from a Mennonite spice store, and I make an awesome ranch dressing with light mayo, buttermilk and the ranch dressing powder. It doesn't taste light at all, which hubby says is the problem, he likes the aftertaste of the light dressing - he also prefers sacharine to aspartame and Splenda - he says they taste "too much like sugar," and he likes the manly bite of the sacharine - he doesn't say manly, when he says it, but I always add it in my head, because that's what I think he's thinking - "sugar is for wimps, real men want a nasty aftertaste").

Anyway, I do occasionally buy a bottled salad dressing if it seems unique enough, and if I like it, I try to recreate it so that I don't have to buy it again.

Try deluting a full flavor creamy dressing (like real roka blue cheese yumm!)with fat free sour cream 1/2 and 1/2. It tastes great for 1/2 the pts and makes a great dip too!

I just found "Bolthouse" Yogurt Dressing-It has less calories than regular dressing, like 70 for 2T. It is delicious. I have tried the ranch and the honey mustard, so yummy. It is usually in the cold section around the lettuce.

Naturally Fresh brand Fat Free Balsamic is only 10 cal per 2 Tbs and very flavorful. I've gotten sick of it though. After struggling to find a low calorie red wine vinegarette, I decided to make my own. I bought a mix for making italian dressing, red wine vinegar, and olive oil. The packet said to use more than twice as much oil as vinegar, but I mixed it about 3 parts vinegar to 1 part oil. I love it!

As far as the creamy dressings, I've given up on low calorie versions. I've tried a bunch, thought they were all awful. So I either save up my points and splurge with the real thing or stick with vinegarettes.

My 2 favourites are Kraft Cal. Wise Greek Feta and Kraft Fat Free Ranch

If you have a Trader Joes near you, try the Parmesan Ranch. It's in the refrigerator section where all the veggies are--I believe the brand name is Follow Your Heart, but not positive. Anyway, it's 25 calories for 2T and really, really good!

Honey Pear Vinaigrette! It's my all time favorite.

try a splash of fruit juice. Its wonderful!

I am using newmans light honey dijon and love it :)

I'm using Wishbone Italian Vinaigrette. I also like the Wishbone Balsamic and Raspberries...and they're only 1 calorie per spray, so it's usually a freebie for me. My sister tried the Wishbone Ranch Spray and said it was different, but not bad.