This is my favorite way to eat a garden salad — the dressing is so addictive and is made up of mostly carrots so it makes me feel like I’m getting a double dose of veggies when I eat it. Plus, it comes together super quickly, in under 10 minutes, if you use baby carrots instead of whole carrots.
Japanese-Style Ginger Carrot Salad Dressing
Servings: 4 servings
This dressing was a staple of most of my favorite Japanese restaurants as a kid, and is still one of the only things that can get me to eat a "real" salad. It's so good you can practically eat it on its own. This recipe yields about 4 side salad portions of salad, or about 2 portions of a main.
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Equipment
- 1 food processor a blender can work, but will be trickier to use since this dressing is fairly thick
Ingredients
For the dressing
- 1.5 cups baby carrots OR peeled, chopped carrots
- 1 inch fresh ginger root peeled and roughly chopped
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1/4 cup water
- 1/4 cup rice vinegar seasoned
- 1/4 cup neutral oil like grapeseed, canola, or similar
- 1 tsp sesame oil
- salt to taste; see notes
For the salad
- 1 head romaine lettuce washed, chopped, and dried
- 1 medium tomato sliced
- 1 cup corn kernels fresh preferred, but frozen/defrosted or canned okay
- 1/2 cup green beans blanched or, if using frozen, defrosted
- 1 block firm tofu optional
- 1 can canned tuna drained; optional
- 2-3 hard boiled eggs sliced; optional
Instructions
Make the dressing
- Add carrots, ginger, water, vinegar, and sugar to a food processor and pulse for about a minute.1.5 cups baby carrots, 1 inch fresh ginger root, 1 tsp sugar, 1/4 cup water, 1/4 cup rice vinegar
- With the processor on, drizzle the oil in in a steady stream.1/4 cup neutral oil
- Once the mixture is fairly smooth (it will never be fully smooth), add the sesame oil, and blitz one more time. Taste and add any salt to your liking.1 tsp sesame oil, salt
Arrange the salad
- Arrange your romaine in a bowl and spoon the dressing over the top — you may have a bit of dressing leftover depending on your tastes. Arrange vegetables and protein of choice on top.
- I prefer to not toss this salad because it's prettier when served in its "layered" form, but feel free to do whatever you'd like.
- Store any leftover dressing in an airtight container in the fridge for up to a week.
Notes
- Â I find that seasoned rice vinegar contains enough salt that I don't typically need to add additional salt, however my tastes skew towards lighter seasoning. Feel free to add salt to your tastes. If you only have unseasoned vinegar, then you should definitely add salt.