Get The Zest Back Into Your Salads With These Delicious Healthy Dressings

Our diet generally changes as the winter months come closer. We skip the light summer salads and stray towards the warm, comfort food group of potatoes and soups.

You can keep your love for salads going strong through the winter months too with these delicious dressings. Salads are an excellent way of getting multiple fruit and vegetable servings, are a great source of fibre and usually have a low calorie count, always good news.

These three salad dressings can be made from scratch at home, are very health-conscious and give you the flexibility to use fresh, natural ingredients. Read on to learn what delicious concoctions you can make to maximise the taste and health factor of your leafy meals.

Let us know when you try them and feel free to share your own salad dressing tips with us too...

Garlic Dressing

This first dressing is packed with nutritional value. Garlic has many antioxidant benefits and olive oil can help lower cholesterol and help diabetics control sugar and insulin levels. In fact, one garlic clove daily will help improve your general health. Get your garlic on and try out this delicious dressing:

Ingredients:

3/4 cup olive oil or vegetable oil

1/4 cup white wine vinegar

1 teaspoon salt

1 clove pressed garlic

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Mix everything together. This dressing keeps for up to two weeks in a covered container in the fridge.

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Mexican Fiesta Dressing

This dressing is very different to one you can buy on the shop shelf. It goes wonderful with salads, fajitas, tacos or as a dip. Let the Mexican in you come out to cook…

Ingredients:

1 cup plain yoghurt (can choose low-fat if you wish)

3 tablespoons minced onion

1-1/2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

1 crushed garlic clove

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon chilli powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

Mix it all together. Enjoy!

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Soya and Ginger Ponzu Sauce

This last one is for the adventurous type! Ponzu is an easy-to-make citrus-based sauce, you then add extra flavour depending on what you like. Result? A perfect mix of tangy and tart, sweet and salty. We said we’d go ginger for this dressing…

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon crushed, peeled, fresh ginger

1/4 cup soya sauce

1/4 cup lemon juice

Mix together and ta-dah! Try this dressing on Asian salad and stir-fries or you can use it as a marinade or dipping sauce too.