For most of America, it’s too hot to cook! We love the idea of summer, but once the warm weather hits, we quickly remember it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Yes, it’s nice to walk around in the sunshine and days in the park are fun, but no one on our team is a huge fan of the heat!
We want to keep our homes as cool as possible. The Neuliven Health team is in San Diego, where most people don’t have air conditioning. And, even if you have A/C, it’s expensive to run, so it’s best to avoid turning it on whenever possible. That’s why we hate turning on our ovens in the summer! It’s too darn hot to add extra warmth to the kitchen. We love grilling food outside, but sometimes it’s just too hot out there. Delivery dinners are expensive and, frequently, not healthy. That’s when we turn to salads.
Salads (depending on what you put into them) are healthy, refreshing, delicious and a great way to eat your veggies. The problem with salads is that dressing — arguably the best part of many salads — can be really, really high in sugar and salt. You think you’re making a healthy choice and then realize you’ve poured salt and corn syrup over a plate of vegetables. That’s why we prefer to make our own dressing. We know exactly what we’re getting and how much to use. These four options are healthier than the competition. They aren’t all low calorie or low fat, but they are made of real ingredients and not packed food coloring, sugar and salt!
There is nothing better than Italian vinaigrette. It’s sharp but savory and acts as a highlight to vegetables instead of drowning them out. It’s easy to make — you probably have everything in your kitchen right now. The stuff that comes out of a bottle has so much junk you would never expect, and it’s so easy to make that we say ditch the store-bought version and use this instead. A serving has 103 calories and less than a gram of carbs! Get the recipe.
The name might make you write this dressing off. But, the recipe doesn’t actually have honey! This dressing can function as a dip as well, which we think is key to a good honey mustard dressing: it should be thicker than a vinaigrette. It uses mayonnaise for that creaminess. This gives you all the delicious flavor of a good honey mustard dressing without the sugar it usually punches you with. A serving has 132 calories and less than a gram of carbs! Get the recipe.
This dressing gives you the creamy zing of a ranch dressing but with the smoky kick of chipotle peppers. You need a blender or food processor, but we think it’s worth cleaning the blender when you get a dressing this good! You can swap out the heavy cream the recipe calls for with skim milk if you want to lower the calories of this dress. The recipe calls for a fourth of a cup of heavy cream. If you use skim milk instead, we suggest using less and slowly adding the milk in until you get a consistency you like. A serving of the dressing, with heavy cream, is 147 calories with one gram of carbs. Get the recipe.
There is a little bit of sweetness in this versatile dress. The person who wrote the recipe even suggests pouting it over low-carb ice cream. The recipe says you should use a fancy oil in addition to the olive oil. We recommend either replacing it with more olive oil or just using water to cut out some calories. It also says to use Himalayan pink salt, we don’t think it makes a difference to the flavor at all: just use a pinch of whatever you usually cook with. If you don’t play around with the recipe, a serving has 158 calories and one gram of carbs. You can cut down on the calories by using water, and we don’t think it makes a difference to the flavor. Get the recipe.
We hope these new dressings make salads exciting for you again. When it’s just a bowl full of greens, salads aren’t that enticing, but these dressings can make a salad a treat!
