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Homemade salad dressing is easy and comes together in minutes! It tastes delicious and avoids the additives in store-bought dressings.
Making homemade salad dressing is one of the top essential skills for any home cook. Nothing but a little olive oil and vinegar, and you can have dressing for days! It’s infinitely more delicious than purchased bottles. Plus, you can avoid random preservatives and additives and get rid of the centuries-old crusty bottles of ranch in your refrigerator. Here’s the best basic salad dressing recipe that we’ve been making for years!
How to make homemade salad dressing: a few tips!
Here’s one thing to note about homemade salad dressing: the amount of oil is critical! Don’t try to get away with less in an attempt to make it lighter. The oil is needed to correctly make the emulsion: that creamy, magical combination of vinegar suspended in oil.
Other than that, there’s not much to know about this simple dressing. Because salad dressing should be just that: simple. This one requires no mincing of garlic or shallot. Just combine olive oil, vinegar, mustard, and a little honey, and whisk away. Homemade salad dressing is easily customizable to your own tastes. A few dressing tips:
- Use a 3 to 1 ratio of oil versus vinegar.
- For the acid, you can substitute balsamic, red wine, apple cider, or sherry vinegar, OR lemon, lime, or orange juice (play with quantities to taste).
- Feel free to add in chopped herbs, minced garlic, minced shallot, or fancy salts.
How to store homemade salad dressing
How to store salad dressing you’ve made at home? Place the dressing in a glass jar with a tight lid, and store it in the refrigerator. Bring the dressing to room temperature, then stir before serving. The olive oil solidifies when it’s cold, but it defrosts quickly after a few minutes on the counter.
Listen: On the topic of homemade salad dressing, our latest A Couple Cooks Podcast episode is all about it! Plus, it includes a sweet giveaway of 3 bottles of California Olive Ranch olive oil — see the podcast page for details.
More salad dressing recipes
Why make homemade salad dressing recipes instead of buying them? They’re healthier than store-bought (with no preservatives or added salt and sugar), quick and easy to make, and they taste amazing. Here are some of our top salad dressing recipes:
- Homemade Ranch dressing is seriously tasty and takes just 5 minutes: why buy it again?
- Caesar dressing recipe has a healthy spin using Greek yogurt and Parmesan
- Homemade Italian dressing is zingy, full of flavor, and easy to make at home
- Lemon vinaigrette tastes like pure lemon, and uses only 4 ingredients
- Strawberry salad dressing is lightly sweet, tangy, and totally addictive!
- Balsamic vinaigrette is super classic, tangy, and easy to make at home
- Greek salad dressing is a simple oil and vinegar dressing that comes together in less than 5 minutes
- Homemade honey mustard dressing is sweet and tangy: and it’s easy to make!
- Avocado dressing is bright green, tangy and savory, perfect for drizzling on salads and bowl meals
Best Homemade Salad Dressing
Homemade salad dressing is simple to make and comes together in minutes. It tastes delicious and helps to avoid preservatives in store-bought dressings.
- Prep Time: 3 minutes
- Cook Time: 0 minutes
- Total Time: 3 minutes
- Yield: 10 tablespoons 1x
- Category: Side Dish
- Method: Whisked
- Cuisine: American
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
- 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
- 1 teaspoon honey or maple syrup
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
- ⅛ teaspoon black pepper
- 6 tablespoons olive oil
Instructions
- In a medium bowl, whisk all ingredients except olive oil. Then slowly whisk in the olive oil tablespoon by tablespoon until the dressing thickens and an emulsion forms. Taste and adjust quantities as desired.
- Store in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks; bring to room temperature and stir before serving.
Salad Dressing FAQ
To get you started, here are our 25 best salad recipes.
Salad oil is any neutral tasting oil that can be used in salad dressings. Examples include vegetable oil, peanut oil, grapeseed oil, or sunflower oil.
Try our Vegan Ranch Dressing: it’s made with cashews and spices.
Use a 3 to 1 ratio of oil versus vinegar.
Keto is low carb high fat, which corresponds to all of the Salad Dressing Recipes listed here.
See Italian Pasta Salad or Italian Dressing.
Caesar dressing contains mayonnaise, lemon, garlic, olive oil, Parmesan cheese, and anchovies. See Caesar Dressing Recipe.
Yes! The exact timing depends on the recipe itself. Most dressing stays in the refrigerator for 1 week or longer.
All vinaigrette dressing recipes are vegan. See Best Balsamic Vinaigrette, Homemade Italian Dressing, Lemon Vinaigrette, Creamy Avocado Dressing, Greek Salad Dressing, and Easy Honey Mustard Dressing. See also Vegan Ranch Dressing.
Cobb salad has a red wine vinaigrette dressing. See Vegetarian Cobb Salad.
It is not recommended to freeze salad dressing.
Amazing!!no eggs!
So excited to run across you recipe sight, will be a devoted enjoyer of delicious scrumptious delightful tastebud pleasing yumminess.
I think a career with a spouse sounds cozy and romantic. So sweet!
Lemon vinaigrette, but where are the lemons?
The lemon vinaigrette is here: https://www.acouplecooks.com/lemon-vinaigrette/
Thank you for changing the amt of OO in recipe. In the past I was adding more honey to compensate.
Lynn
Amazing! Tastes great!