If you miss rich, creamy salad dressings (I’m looking at you, ranch), then you will love this recipe for low sodium creamy salad dressing. It has just the right balance of flavors to make it a great alternative to the super salty shelf-ready salad dressings out there. And to top it off, you can whip it up in about five minutes.
There are only so many salads you can eat without salad dressing. Vinaigrettes are a great alternative, but if I am honest, there are also only so many salads I can eat with a vinaigrette. Sometimes I just want a creamy salad dressing. I’m just going to assume that you wholeheartedly agree, in which case you have come to the right place.
This dressing is made with ingredients I always have on hand and can be whipped up in about five minutes. Try it out the next time you serve up a salad; you won’t be disappointed.
5-Minute Creamy Salad Dressing
SODIUM COUNT: 44 mg per serving (2 Tablespoons); 440 mg in the entire recipe
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Total Time: 5 minutes
- Yield: 10 1x
Ingredients
- 3 ounces goat cheese*
- 1/3 cup sour cream
- ¼ cup mayonnaise**
- ¼ to ½ tsp freshly ground black pepper ((to taste))
- ¼ tsp garlic powder
- 1 Tbsp lemon juice
- 4–6 Tbsp water
Instructions
- In a small bowl, soften the goat cheese by warming it in the microwave in ten second intervals. This makes the goat cheese creamy and stir-able. You can skip this step if you don’t mind having to stir the dressing a little more vigorously.
- Add the sour cream, mayonnaise, black pepper, and garlic powder to the softened goat cheese. Stir until creamy. Stir in the lemon juice and 4 tablespoons of the water. If you’d like your dressing thinner, add more water 1 tablespoon at a time until it reaches desired consistency. (I usually end up with 5 tablespoons.)
Notes
NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION – Yield: 10 servings, 2 tablespoons per serving
Sodium: 44.0 mg, Calories: 73.0, Total Fat: 6.8 g, Saturated Fat: 2.6 g, Cholesterol: 13.3 mg, Carbohydrates: 0.6 g, Fiber: 0.0 g, Sugar: 0.3 g, Protein: 1.8 g.
* We use Montchevre brand, which has 40 mg sodium per ounce.
** We used Kraft Real Mayo, which has 70 mg sodium per tablespoon.
The dressing will keep in the refrigerator for about 7-10 days.
Just a question Kathy. Have you ever tried any other type of cheese, such as blue cheese?
I haven’t tried this yet, but it looks very good.
Thanks for your wonderful blog.
This would probably be excellent with blue cheese or even feta but they both tend to be really high in sodium, which is why we stick to goat cheese in this. In this dressing the goat cheese is not terribly strong so even if you don’t *love* goat cheese, you might like this dressing. So glad you like the blog!
Hello from Houston Texas!
My husband has recently been placed on a low sodium diet due to heart disease. I am so glad to have found your site as I now must alter 50 years of cooking!
Thank you,
Clara Martin
I’m glad you found the site too! Hope our recipes can help you transition. It was tough for us at first but it gets easier all the time. 🙂
So fresh tasting and creamy. I did make this about 5 hours before dinner and it was a good consistency at the time, but when it was time to eat it had thickened up. Added a bit more liquid…the store bought went in the trash.. Thanks!
★★★★★
Happy to hear it’s worked for you. We have this on the meal plan this week with a wedge salad. 🙂
Kathy is there another low sodium soft cheese I could you instead of goat cheese. We raise goats and i cant stand the whang that goat cheese has. It tastes like their smell. Its the one chesse i won’t eat.
Hi there. I am not sure what would make a good substitute. I think if I were going to try to replace the goat cheese, I would start with about a tablespoon (maybe 1.5 tablespoons) of cream cheese. (I believe the generic cream cheese we get has about 90mg per tablespoon.) I might add a dollop of Greek yogurt (or perhaps more sour cream) to make up a bit of the volume. I haven’t tested this, but it might be a place to start. Good luck!
This was very nice and very quick. In the future I plan to try variations using ingredients such as dill, minced onion, minced garlic, crushed red pepper, and other herbs. Thanks so much!
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