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Eating healthy is awesome… until I find myself craving all things rich and creamy—like dressings, mayo, aioli, or creamed soups.
This is why Greek yogurt has become my BFF in the kitchen, and this is why this Healthy Homemade Vegetarian Caesar Dressing is my savior. Not only does it act as a brilliant sub-in for the traditional caesar dressing, but it makes for a great chip dip and pizza crust dipper.
Say hello to indulging guilt free.
Bitches love indulging guilt free.
Since I’m pescetarian, I do get enjoy the standard caesar dressing in all of it’s salty anchovy-filled glory, but I wanted to make this dressing vegetarian friendly. That means no anchovies, and no parmesan since parmesan contains rennet.
Luckily, both of these ingredients were extremely easy to substitute.
When it came to replacing anchovies, I knew I had to find something super salty—not just sort of salty. When I stumbled across the jar of capers in my fridge, I had my a-ha moment.
And let me tell you, they worked perfectly.
As for the parmesan, I used what anyone uses in order to bring non-dairy cheesiness to a recipe: nutritional yeast.
I specified a *small* clove of garlic in the ingredients. If you only have big cloves, try half to start and if you’d like more garlic-y goodness, add the rest. I say this because I used an entire LARGE clove one time and honesty, I could have tainted all of Transylvania with a simple sigh in Dracula’s general direction. I love love love garlic, so I was fine with it, but for your own sake… be careful
This dressing takes a whopping ten minutes to make and it keeps in the fridge for up to a week.
All I have to say is… Bye, Renée!
If you make this dish, snap a photo and tag me on the Insta @killing__thyme! I love seeing your creations.
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Healthy Homemade Vegetarian Caesar Dressing
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup plain Greek Yogurt
- 2 TBSP freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 3 TBSP nutritional yeast
- 1/4 tsp capers
- 1 TBSP extra virgin olive oil
- 1 TBSP Dijon mustard
- 1 small clove of garlic
- 1/2 tsp dried thyme
- 1/4 tsp kosher salt
- Cracked black pepper, to taste
Materials.
- A blender
Instructions
- Place all of the ingredients into the blender and blend until smooth. Taste and season further if you prefer.If you'd like a runnier dressing, add a but of water and blend. Check it, and keep adding water, bit by bit, until you blend to the consistency you prefer.
I love using Greek yogurt as a healthy alternative to using mayo or sour cream. Great idea in subbing out anchovies for capers to keep that tasty saltiness in the dressing too.
That sounds lovely, I use capers so much at this time of year they offer such a great fresh zing that is often missing in ingredients throughout winter.
This dressing looks and sounds delicious and so easy to make! Such a great thing to have in the fridge :)
Such a creative idea with the capers. That sounds really tasty.
I LOVE caesar dressing!!!
But I never thought about the fact it isn’t vegetarian!!!! (DOH!)
Glad to have this recipe to call on when I have vegetarian friends for lunch :D
This recipe is NOT vegetarian. It contains rennet as part of parmesan cheese. Rennet is from baby cows stomachs after they’ve been murdered. You should retitle this recipe.
Interesting! Thanks for the info. I’ve never heard of this, so I’m glad you brought it up. I’m going to rework this recipe so that it is, indeed, vegetarian.
Actually you can get vegetarian parmesan cheese (made without rennet) in virtually any supermarket for an almost identical price, so this recipe could very very easily be made vegetarian. Don’t be so over-dramatic.
You make an excellent point! I want to try this with nutritional yeast as well – just haven’t gotten around to it. But there are so many plant-based cheese options these days!