Easy Oil-Free Salad Dressing

Mix up this easy oil-free salad dressing anytime you’re looking for a quick and healthy dressing for your salad. This dressing recipes is just 6 ingredients. It’s great on salads, pasta salad, marinades and more!

Making your own oil-free salad dressing is super easy and significantly healthier than using the store-bought dressings that have tons of added oils and preservatives.

I recommend avoiding oil as much as possible, but I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to get very refined oils like canola oil, vegetable oil, and soybean oils out of your diet. These oils are highly processed and contain trans-fats (the bad kind). These are not the types of foods you want in your diet.

Why I love this Oil-Free Salad Dressing Recipe

• Dietary needs – this dressing is vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, oil-free, and refined sugar free
• Quick dressing – ready in less than five minutes!
• Simple ingredients – you probably have all the ingredients in your kitchen right now!
• Versatile – you can use this dressing for more than just salads. Serve it with pasta, as a dipping sauce, or as a marinade
• Great on any salad – this is basically the oil-free equivalent of a simple vinaigrette. It has a fairly neutral flavor, so it will taste great with any salad

Ingredient Notes & Substitutions

• Water: instead of oil as the base, we’ll use water. We won’t use it in the same proportion as you might in a regular vinaigrette – the water just helps get the right consistency and balance of flavors
• Dijon Mustard: a vinaigrette staple ingredient. Dijon has the best flavor for a dressing like this – I don’t recommend using yellow mustard
• Maple Syrup: maple syrup adds some sweetness to the dressing. For a completely fruit-sweetened dressing, you can use date syrup instead
• Lemon Juice: acid helps create a nice tangy flavor. You could sub lime juice or apple cider vinegar
• Salt & Pepper

How to make Oil-Free Salad Dressing

It’s so simple!

Step 1. Whisk all ingredients in a small bowl or add to a mason jar and shake to combine. Serve on your favorite salad!

What to use this oil-free dressing with

Use this dressing on any salad. Here are a few suggestions:

More oil-free dressings

Looking for other easy vegan versions of your favorite dressings? I’ve got you:

Tried this recipe?

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📖 Recipe