Caesar Salad Dressing (Vegan)
A Caesar salad-style dressing without the anchovy and eggs found in the traditional version. It's creamy, garlic forward, and absolutely delicious.
If you’re after a caesar salad dressing without the anchovy, or just a version that is vegan and dairy-free, this is the one to make. It’s checks all the boxes. Creamy and rich, it has a good amount of briney edge from capers. I like to use a combination of lime and orange juices for added depth and dimension.
Caesar Salad Dressing: Other Ways to Use It
Typically when I make this dressing there is enough left over for another 3-4 large salads. And I actually find that we use it for all sorts of other things as well. Some ideas:
- Treat it like an aioli: It’s great for dredging these oven fries or for drizzling oven baked potatoes.
- Wedge Salad; I typically do a ranch dressing on a wedge salad, but this Caesar-style dressing is a nice swap.
- In egg salad: Use it in place of the Greek yogurt in this egg salad.
- Spread on a frittata sandwich: It’s really good slathered on sandwiches like this frittata sandwich. The garlic stands up to the rest of the ingredients and brings all the things mayo does - only better.
Caesar Salad Dressing: Ingredients
A few notes on the main ingredients used here.
- Tofu: The key here is buying silken tofu. It is what will lend the creamy texture to your dressing.
- Citrus Juice: traditional Caesar salad dressing uses lemon juice to balance out the egg and oil, you need something assertive to cut through the richness. Here I like to use a blend of orange and lime juices, but if you have lemon on hand, by all means use it.
- Nutritional Yeast: You might be tempted to skip it, but resist. It brings savory umami and depth to your dressing.
- Garlic: Try the dressing with the five cloves that are called for, the garlic here is assertive. Make note and decided whether you’d like to dial the garlic up or down in future batches.
- Capers: Use the small capers in brine.
- Olive oil: the olive oil brings a lot of flavor notes to this dressing because the quantity Is quite large. I like to use a good-quality, but not too spicy olive oil here.
- Mustard: I typically use Dijon-style mustard for this dressing. But whole grain mustard is also good.
More Dressing Recipes
- Ginger Carrot Dressing
- Seven Great Blender Dressings
- Spicy Coconut Milk Dressing
- Five Minute Avocado Dressing
- Seven Great Blender Dressings
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Caesar Salad Dressing (vegan)
This makes a lot of dressing. It’s great if you feed a larger family, or if you make multiple salads throughout the week. Cut quantites in half to make less. Use whatever sweetener you prefer here. I like to use honey, but it you’re vegan you’ll want to choose something like agave or another sugar.
- 1 cup / 225g silken tofu
- 1/3 cup nutritional yeast
- 5 medium garlic cloves, peeled
- 1 tablespoon Dijon or whole-grain mustard
- 1 tablespoon capers
- 1 tablespoon sugar (or honey if not vegan)
- 1/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
- 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
- 1 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
- 1 cup / 200 g extra-virgin olive oil
- Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
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Combine tofu, nutritional yeast, garlic, mustard, capers, honey, orange and lime juices, salt, and olive oil in a blender. Process until smooth and uniform in appearance. Season with black pepper. Will keep, refrigerated, for about a week.
Makes about 2 1/2 cups.
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