The must-have Healthy Vegan Ranch- Oil and sugar free.

Salads are the first thing, most people identify as the healthy way to eat, be it for weight loss or chronic disease control. But, the difficult and tricky part with the salad based eating regimens is the dressing. If your dressing is dairy based, loaded with saturated fat and salt/sugar, it counteracts the whole purpose of relying on salads. Also, the amount of dressing needs to be just in optimum amounts, which is not followed or hard to follow mostly.

When it comes to wholefood plant based salads, I love the dressings more than the actual salad. Because, the dressing is like the hanger on which your salad rests. Make a dependable dressing, and you can sell broccoli to kids or brussels sprouts to adults at the dinner table:) Pick a great produce combo for your salad, but with a dressing that disappoints, the salad looses the charm. And suddenly, healthy eating becomes boring in an instant.

So, this basic and must have dressing is closest to traditional ranch, but is much more healthier. Based on beans, the dressing is easy to make and stays in the fridge for a good week. As a bonus, you can truly let the dressing rain on your salad and still not worry about excess calories.

The must-have Healthy Vegan Ranch- oil and sugar free

A dependable, easy, plant based dressing made with beans and does magic on your salads

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 5 minutes mins

Equipment

• Blender

Ingredients

  

• 3/4 cup cannellini beans- can substitute for chick peas as well cooked or canned
• 1/4 cup sun flower seeds – soaked in hot water for 15 min and drained
• 1 lemon juice freshly squeezed
• 1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 3 Tbsp nutritional yeast
• 2 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp black pepper powder
• 1/2 tsp lemon zest – optional
• pinch of salt
• 1/2 cup plant based milk – I like oat milk for this recipe

Instructions

 

• There is just one instruction for this lovely versatile dressing. Dump all ingredients in a blender jar, blend into smooth saucy mixture. Store in air tight jar. Basic, simple, and so useful to just have a jar of this dressing in the fridge.

  Adjust the consistency by adding few more beans if a bit runny. Or add few tsp plant based milk, if too thick.

  *If you are using canned beans- rinse thoroughly. If you are using freshly cooked beans, make sure they are thoroughly cooked.

  *Want to be more health conscious–use sprouted beans to make the dressing.

  *Feel free to add more flavors with herbs- dill/ cilantro/ mint/ basil, or spice with- jalapeno ,chipotle peppers. I love adding cilantro/jalapeno or few canned chipotle peppers.