One of the biggest stumbling blocks I encountered after making the decision to severely reduce the amount of oil I used in cooking and baking was how to make salad dressing. I was completely stumped. Red wine vinaigrette with copious amounts of olive oil had been my go-to dressing. For ideas I turned to Ann Esselstyn’s recipes in Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease. They filled the gap, but I wasn’t thrilled with them; I needed a whole heck of a lot more flavor. Adding nuts to a basic oil-free dressing created that nice, creamy richness I craved and took the edge off of the tang of vinegar. From there it was just a matter of adding my favorite flavors.
After you’ve made this dressing, be sure and make my Mexican-Spiced Roasted Vegetable Sandwich…It’s one of my most popular recipes.
Oil-free Sweet & Tangy Green Chile-Chipotle-Cilantro Salad Dressing
- Total Time: 10
Description
Rev up your salad with this spicy, tangy, beer-soaked yet oil-free salad dressing that just happens to be loaded with healthy ingredients.
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/2 cup lager beer
- 1/2 cup cashews
- 1/4 cup pepitas
- juice of 1 lime
- 2 oz. chopped green chiles
- 1 tsp. cumin
- 1/2 tsp. Chipotle Tabasco
- 1/8 tsp. chile powder
- 1/8 tsp. coriander
- pinch salt & black pepper
- small handful of cilantro
- 1 small nub of fresh turmeric
- 1 clove garlic
- 1 date
Instructions
- Combine all ingredients in a blender and process until very smooth.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 8
- Calories: 81
- Sugar: 3
- Sodium: 26
- Fat: 4
- Saturated Fat: 1
- Unsaturated Fat: 3
- Trans Fat: 0
- Carbohydrates: 9
- Protein: 2
- Cholesterol: 0
Lager beer?! That sounds pretty awesome for an ingredient in this dressing, plus it’s oil-free, which is double fantastic! Love the ingredients altogether: cilantro, green chile and chipotle. Sounds smoky, fresh and spicy! Thanks for sharing x
Thank you :-)!
Where can I find Chipotle Tabasco?
http://www.veganmiam.com
You’ll find it in the hot sauce aisle next to regular Tabasco – or just use some puréed chipotle in adobo sauce (mmmm!). I also just “found” Green Pepper Tabasco sauce – so good!
I make all my dressings using nut butters and they are better than any I’ve ever had with loads of oil. I can’t stand oil now. This cilantro dressing looks soooo delicious!
I know it. Oil just makes dressing seem and taste very heavy.
Beer! This sounds amazing! I haven’t experimented much with nuts in oil-free dressings but I loved the avocado-based one I made for the VVP. Gotta try this next!
You get that same creaminess as with avocado – a really nice texture.
Chipolte Tabasco sauce is my husband’s favorite go-to flavoring 😛 He goes through a bottle like every 1-2 months! Held love this, and the baby can have pumpkin seeds 🙂 I might see how it’d taste with all seeds and no cashews, so he can have it.
I’m the same – I love this Tabasco flavor. Has your husband tried the Green Pepper Tabasco? It’s wonderful.
That is my personal fave. I have mini bottles for when we travel 😉
Beer in a salad dressing? That’s a new one on me.
That bottle if beer was calling to me…
I’ve been doctoring up Red Wine Vinegar for 2 years now for my dressings and have tried so many ways to get some thickness…this is awesome! I got 15 bottles of red wine vinegar on sale years ago so it’s my go to dressing base but I can’t ever get the creaminess I want. I wonder if sunflower seeds would work as well as cashews to cut down a little cost (I go through A LOT of salad dressing)
I love your spicy background too. I’m always throwing in lots of black or red pepper in mine. The cilantro is brilliant to thicken as well. With all those flavors, the greens are really irrelevant…HE, HE!
Oh yeah, I’m sure sunflower seeds would work. I bought a huge pile of cashew pieces (sort of like you and your stock of vinegar!) so tend to put a little in everything.
I picked up some cilantro dressing to look at the ingredients this week and got immediately grossed out! There was junk I had never considered would go in a dressing… Bleck!
This looks fantastic!
Exactly right! Most Commercial dressings are scary. Thanks, Holly!
**jaw hits floor** this is GORGEOUS! I’m forever inspired by your luscious looking dressings, Annie! Tonight is salad night for us and this is a game changer for sure!
Awww! Thanks, sweetheart!
That’s an unusual recipe! And sounds good – I’m gonna try it. Thanks for sharing it with us!
You bet, Patty!
Nuts have become a staple in any sauce I make, they add depth that is just not found with most other oils and flavors! This looks and sounds amazing! I would love this on pasta!
Ooooh – interesting! I have a sandwich recipe coming up that uses this same dressing…
That 1/2 up of lager looks like a “what the hell!” moment to me ;). Steve has a bbq veg recipe that started with sliced capsicum (bell peppers), mushrooms and onions all fried together to an homogenous delicious tangle that he decided “what the hell!” and tipped some of his beer into while he was bbqing. The result was scrumptious and is a family bbq regular through summer. Love this recipe and your inventiveness. There are always shiny rainbows in your posts to lure we mid winterites up to your sunnier climes. Cheers for this one, it’s going into my “summer happiness” folder. By the time summer gets round to tapping at the door I will have an entire book of scrumptious gorgeousness courtesy of you wonderful vegan food bloggers in the north 🙂
Hehe! You’re right – – and some of the best meals come out of those moments!
Especially when you have drunk most of the lager (and it’s friends) before you start to cook…THAT is the stuff that inventions are made of 😉
What kind of green chilies do you use, Annie? Poblano? Anaheim? Jalapeno? I wonder how the dressing would taste if the chilies were roasted… Either way, I’m definitely making this. Thank you!
Oh gosh…I used a can of roasted mild green chiles – not sure what kind of chiles!
Okay, that makes sense! I think they are Ortega chiles. 😉
Exactly!
Hmmm…I think I’ll roast some poblanos. LOVE those guys! And they’re easy to get here in CA. Cheers!
Oh yeah!
This looks so good, I love cilantro! I’m always looking for good salad dressing recipes… It always seems like so many dressings are so unhealthy, which is sad, because the salad you put them on is healthy!
This looks amazing! Do you just use it on salad, or are there others you like to put it on?
Thanks, Michaela! I have a sandwich recipe coming up that uses this dressing :-)…
Wow so much flavour in there ! I have never heard of putting beer in dressing before- so interesting!!
oh yum! this is totally speaking my language.
Um, I think the salad dressing at Cafe Rio has some radical competition. I LOVE this!
Hehe! If only! Speaking of…gotta get a Rio visit in while I’m in SLC…
For reals. Don’t forget to invite me…
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What do you recommend in Replacement for beer? More vinegar? Thanks!
You could try vegetable broth instead, Bre.
Can it be made in a food processor?
Absolutely! Will probably take a bit more time to get it smooth – but should work just as well.
Do you have any suggestions for substituting the beer and cashews?
Hi Rebecca – just omit the beer completely if you like and add broth or water instead. For the cashews, you can try sunflower seeds or even almonds.
wonderful, thanks for the advice!
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