I’m going on week two of a diet and I can honestly say that one of the things that is making it easier on me is finding a creamy dressing that I can eat with my salad at night. I’m a ranch dressing fanatic (I think all Montanans are) but I also like creamy garlic and blue cheese dressings as well. Even low-fat versions are so calorie laden that you can only use the tiniest amount on the salad which just leaves me craving more.
Through experimentation and label reading I came up with the following salad dressing. It uses fat-free plain yogurt (1 cup = 130 calories) as its creamy base.
| Creamy Garlic Dill Dressing |
- 1/4 cup of fat-free plain yogurt (plain, not vanilla)
- 6 Tbsp of rice vinegar
- 3 tsps of dill
- 1 small clove of garlic
- pinch of salt
- Black pepper
- Chop garlic into small pieces and add to yogurt and rice vinegar.
- Using a stick blender, give it a whirl for a few minutes to further smash-up the garlic and get the yogurt and vinegar fully integrated.
- Add the dill, salt, and pepper and give the dressing another quick buzz.
The main calorie carrying ingredient is the yogurt. A half cup of fat-free plain yogurt is 65 calories. The clove of garlic adds a negligible 4 calories to the mix and for sake of overestimating, we can add an additional calorie for the dill. So the entire batch is 70 calories and covers four medium-sized salads. That is roughly 5 calories per tablespoon compared to the 24 calories per tablespoon for fat-free ranch dressing.
Now, I do concede you have to like vinegar to like this dressing. Rice vinegar really is a pleasant taste.  Adjust the amount of garlic to suit your taste. Just remember that if you add more garlic, the calorie content also increases.