Tasty, super-low calorie salad dressing...and so easy to make!

This recipe can help you avoid the fat-trap of salad dressings and keep your salads healthful.

We all know we should be eating lots of vegetables.  Salads are a great way to incorporate them into your diet.  But, then we put the dressing on and thereby add a ton of calories...sabotaging our healthy effort.  Just one tablespoon of olive oil has 120 calories...all fat calories.

If you want to reduce your salad dressing calories, try this citrus juice and miso paste dressing.  If you've never used miso before, it might sound weird.  If you have used miso (and liked it) I bet your taste buds just perked up!

Simplest recipe:  mix some miso paste with the juice of a lemon, lime or orange.  The end.

Perhaps a ratio will help?  It's not necessary, really.  It's all to your taste.  No worrying about proper oil-vinegar ratio for taste or mixability.  For my salads, medium to large, I use about 1 teaspoon of miso paste and the juice of 1/2 lime (or lemon).

For added flavor I add 1/4 teaspoon Dijon mustard and 1 clove of garlic, grated with a microplane.  Calories for this?  Under 30!  Compare that to what dressing(s) you currently eat (and don't forget to account for what a serving size is listed as on the bottle and how much you actually use).

Miso is a Japanese food/seasoning made from rice and soybeans.  It is used to make soup broth, marinades, sauces and glazes.  I use Westbrae brand miso.  It comes in brown, white and red versions.  The darker the color, the stronger the flavor.  You can find more recipes and information for miso with a quick internet search.

Nutritional information for 1 teaspoon of Westbrae miso:
10 calories
0 grams  fat
0 milligrams cholesterol
1 gram sugar
230 milligrams sodium

Another beauty of this recipe is that you can build onto it as you would oil and vinegar.  Now, you can eat huge vegetable salads and not worry about undoing your good work with high-fat, high-calorie dressing!

photo by: Alex Ex at Wikimedia Commons with this license

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