Salad is and will always be the healthiest way to nourish oneself. Its ingredients are mainly greens and fresh vegetables like tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, and while they are rich in vitamins they contain zero fat, allowing us to eat our fill unreservedly. But be careful: if you pick the wrong dressing, you can turn even a healthy bowl of salad into a bowl of heavy calories.
Caesar dressing, Thousand Island dressing and Vinaigrette are the most popular salad dressings of Germany. Not surprising, as fat has always been a flavour-carrier, and the abovementioned dressings contain more than enough of that! Mayonnaise, sour cream or whipped cream – these are the hidden forms of fat. Nonetheless, if you want to enjoy a healthy salad while going through the summer feeling guilt-free, you should try some classical dressings that contain only healthy fatty acids. As such, we’d like to introduce a recipe that is not only delicious, but also has a figure-flattering result. Bon Appetit!
The classical vinaigrette – with less fat
In France, a recipe with one part vinegar and two parts oil form the basis of the classical vinaigrette (French for “vinegar”). Go ahead and add on more ingredients, such as fresh herbs. If you’d like to make this even healthier, you can replace one part of the oil with fresh orange juice. Here’s how the recipe goes:
Ingredients:
- 75 ml olive oil (cold pressed)
- 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar (white)
- 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard (coarse)
- 2 fresh oranges
- Salt and pepper
- Firstly, cut the oranges into halves and squeeze the juice out, then measure 175 ml of orange juice into a small pot. Simmer at medium heat until only a third of the liquid remains.
- Add vinegar, mustard, salt and pepper to the juice, until you get a creamy and uniform mass.
- Now mix the vinaigrette together with the olive oil in a salad dressing shaker (available here) and shake it vigorously to create a homogenous mass. Voilà!
Image: © istock.com/ DirkRietschel
