Try this tahini salad dressing for a great addition to your sald! If you’re trying to eat more vegetables, fresh salads are a great way to do it. Here is a healthy and delicious homemade dressing.
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For this salad, I used super-fresh leaf lettuce and rainbow Swiss chard from a farmer’s market, along with these awesome purple radishes and a variety of other vegetables, cilantro leaves, plus some cashews. You could also dip raw vegetables into the tahini salad dressing for a snack or appetizer.
I have been making this dressing lately as a fresh and nutritious addition to my salads. I started buying tahini (sesame seed paste) in order to make my own hummus, which I enjoy with whole-grain crackers, baby carrots, and peppers. I also use it in wraps, like my Favorite Grilled Veggie Hummus Wrap, and for Butternut Squash Walnut Flatbread. It’s fresh and delicious, you decide what flavors go into it, it saves money, AND you cut back on the amount of single-use plastics you’re using: win-win!
In the past, I have had issues with buying a can of sesame paste. The consistency was too grainy. I found a jar instead at an Asian supermarket. Not only does it taste better, but it is easier to store and also lasts longer if you only use it occasionally. By the way, I love Michael Solomonov’s recipes for tahini sauce and hummus in his cookbook Zahav.
This dressing is a nice alternative to bottled dressing. These premade salad dressings are often too high in added sugars, sodium, plus preservatives. This tahini-lemon flavored dressing goes well with leaf lettuce, spinach, kale, spring mix, and romaine salads.
Most of this salad came from Farmers’ Markets: so glad to find local salad fixings in a beautiful outdoor location. Then you know you are eating greens rich in nutrients that were just picked from the fields and had not been sitting in trucks and a supermarket for days or weeks: losing some vitamins from exposure to air and light.
Sodium in Tahini Salad Dressing
Many popular bottled salad dressing brands have 200 – 500 milligrams of sodium per 2 tablespoon serving. And I know I usually have more than 2 tablespoons of salad dressing on a large salad. Adults should have less than 1,500 – 2,300 mg. of sodium per day, according to the American Heart Association.
As you can see, salad dressing can be a significant source of sodium in the diet. Watch out for other salty items in salads like olives, croutons, salted nuts, and real or artificial bacon bits.
Ingredient Tips
If you use fresh garlic, try soaking the chopped garlic in water for ten minutes so the taste is not too strong in the salad dressing.
For this recipe, the reduced-sodium soy sauce adds only 37 milligrams per serving (55 milligrams total sodium per serving – the brand I used has 440 milligrams per tablespoon) and the other ingredients are low in sodium. So you get lots of flavor without much sodium at all!
Reduced-sodium tamari is an even better alternative to the reduced-sodium soy sauce with more flavor.
For fresh ginger, I like to slice off the peel with a paring knife, and then grate it using a grating plate, like this one I reviewed for Food & Nutrition Magazine. If you don’t use fresh ginger too often, wrap it in plastic wrap or foil and freeze it so it stays fresh for months instead of a couple of weeks.
Other Recipes You May Enjoy
- Fresh Tomato Lime Salad Dressing with Cilantro
- Tahini Salad Dressing
- Orange Tahini Grilled Tofu
- Salad with Beans, Quinoa, Rice, and Pecans and Lemon-Herb Dressing
- Savory Butternut Squash Walnut Flatbread
- Arroz Colorido: Colorful Mexican Rice
Easy Tahini Salad Dressing
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoon water
- 1 tablespoon tahini
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- ½ teaspoon reduced sodium soy sauce
- 1 dash ground black pepper
- 1 dash garlic powder
- 1 dash powdered ginger
Instructions
- Combine water, tahini, lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, soy sauce, black pepper, garlic powder, and powdered ginger with a small whisk in a small bowl.
- Drizzle the olive oil into the mixture and whisk together.
Notes
the powdered variety.
If you have a chance, check out the Zahav cookbook to learn more about authentic Israeli cooking. This link will take you to my Bookshop.com page, which has some of my favorite cookbooks and other books. Bookshop.com supports local independent bookstores.
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How did you like this recipe? Please leave a comment and star rating in the comments below:
Updated 6/15/2020
Love tahini – it makes such a good salad dressing or dipping sauce, doesn’t it? Eb 🙂
Thank you, Eb. I have never really used it by itself. The flavor is pretty strong: maybe I would try it with lemon juice.
Tahini is such a fabulous ingredient. I use it in sauces a lot. I’m intrigued by your addition of ginger and will have to try it.
Love a salad dressing, & this one looks amazing! Thanks for sharing with #CookBlogShare 🙂
I’m very partial to tahini and your salad dressing sounds well worth trying. Thanks for sharing the recipe.