Dressings make salads and this ranch dressing recipe is the best of the best–plus it’s Whole Food Plant Based and vegan, which means you won’t find a healthier dressing anywhere! Follow these tips to make sure yours lives up!
- Remember to buy raw cashews–they’re different than the roasted, salted ones you enjoy as a snack!
- Plan ahead–you need to soak the cashews overnight in order to blend them into a creamy dressing (yes, you can use the “soak-them-in-hot-water-for-30-minutes-hack,” but I find that they blend into a smoother, creamier dressing if they are soaked overnight.
- This recipe calls for 1 cup of water, but some like a thicker ranch dressing, while others prefer a thinner one. Blend in a 1/4 cup of water at a time until you get the thickness that’s perfect for you!
- Need a party dip? Make a thick ranch dipping sauce by cutting back on the water–for dips, start with an 1/8 of a cup of water.
Equipment
Ingredients
Dressing Base
- 1 cup raw cashews
- 1 cup water
- 3 tbsp apple cider vinegar
Dry Spices
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp onion powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 tsp dry basil
- 1/8 tsp crushed chili flakes (optional)
Fresh Herbs
- 1/4 cup chopped fresh dill more if you really like dill
- 1/4 cup chopped spring onions
Instructions
- Soak the cashews overnight. If you are in a hurry, you can soak them in very hot water for about 30 minutes. I've done both and think it gets a bit more creamy when soaked overnight.
- Put cashews in food processor/blender and blend down as much as possible.
- Add in the DRY spices (not the fresh dill or spring onions) and apple cider vinegar–blend in.
- Add 1/2 cup of water and blend.
- Check the consistency. It should be thinning out nicely–but still too thick for salad dressing (but great for veggie dipping)
- Add another 1/4 cup of water and check consistency. I like it with one cup of water, but you may like it a bit thicker–remember, it's easy to add a bit more water to thin out, not so easy to soak more cashews overnight and thicken back up!
- Once you get the consistency you like, add the fresh dill and spring onions. Blend them in with a just a few quick pulses of your food processor.
- Refrigerate in an air tight container for up to one week.
Notes
Nutrition Information for General Purposes Only
Is this ranch dressing recipe really healthy?
In regards to health, the first think you’ll notice about this WFPB ranch dressing recipe is that there is no added oil, no sugar, and just a pinch of salt. It’s just raw cashew nuts, fresh and dried herbs, and a splash of apple cider vinegar, which has some proven health benefits. That means just one serving of this ranch dressing gives you a host of healthy stuff, like 8% of your daily protein needs and 11% of you iron needs!
That being said, this ranch dressing recipe does use a nut base, which means it has some calories. One serving, as you can see in the nutrition card, has 126 calories, and there are 6 servings per batch, which is about a cup and a half of dressing. When I make a big salad for a meal, I usually put a couple servings of dressing on it, which means I’m getting 252 calories of dressing. That’s not bad at all, considering the rest of the meal is made up of whole fresh vegetables!
Where you can get into trouble, on the other hand, is if you dump the whole container of ranch in a bowl and start dipping bread and other snacks in it, as one cup-and-a-half batch of dressing is easy to eat and has 756 calories–plus whatever your dipping in it! So…if you’re going to use this as a dip, make sure you share, or at least adjust your caloric intake for the rest of the day, so you’re not overeating!