Basic Lemon Vinaigrette

This easy lemon vinaigrette recipe has just 5 ingredients and is done in under 10 minutes. I love to make a batch of this each week to have for easy salads. Bonus: use any kind of sweetener (honey, agave) or mustard you like to switch this dressing up each time!

Hey hey hey, lemon dressing!

This is one of our favorite easy dressings for meal prep, one of those that we make slightly different versions of each week.

The premise is basic, of course: If the dressing is made, I'm about 8,937 times more likely to actually eat a salad mid-week instead of microwaving pasta leftovers which will always have my heart.

This dressing, for sure, is super easy to make, but just the brain shift of KNOWING IT'S DONE helps my "it's so hard I can't even" paralysis that happens mid-week when everything is going on and overwhelm is my best friend and worst enemy.

So we do double duty here! We "meal prep" our lemon vinaigrette recipe, but it takes 5 minutes which still totally counts. I wrote in the recipe that this takes 10 minutes, but that would really be if you are quite slow and don't know where all of your ingredients are.

Lemon Vinaigrette Recipe

Ingredients for this lemon vinaigrette dressing are! Lemon juice (obviously), mustard (any kind you like), salt, maple syrup, and olive oil. I go kind of low on the olive oil; lots of recipes have about 3 parts oil to 1 part acid or even more, but I like equal parts oil and acid (lemon juice, in this case), plus enough salt + sugar to balance the acidic flavor.

PS feel FREE to sub any sweetener you like! Honey and agave work great, or even simple syrup if you're a fancy bar person. I am not a fancy bar person. I am a boxed wine person.

This is a small batch of this lemon dressing for salad, so feel free to double or triple it! This will make enough for about 4 medium-sized salads, depending on how coated you like your salad.

I use this little juicer for the lemon juice, which is one of the best ones I've owned over the years, and it's cheap!

As for how to use this, the sky's the limit: I love this with just a handful of prepped greens as a side dish, over a more involved salad or even a grain bowl for a yummy tang over roasted veggies and quinoa or similar.

One of the most rewarding things about cooking at home, to me, is having simple ingredients around like this to make basic foods taste really yummy. PLUS, acidic toppings added to just about anything are delicious. Enjoy this!

Basic Lemon Vinaigrette

This easy lemon vinaigrette recipe has maple syrup for extra flavor and is done in just 10 minutes. Make a double or triple batch for meal prep and enjoy easy salads all week long!

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Prep Time 10 minutes mins

Equipment

• Juicer
• Measuring Cup Set

Ingredients

  

1x2x3x

• ½ lemon juiced (about 3 tablespoons)
• 1 tablespoon grainy mustard
• ½ teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 tablespoon maple syrup see note
• 3 tablespoons olive oil

Instructions

 

• Shake all ingredients in a jar or whisk together in a bowl. Taste, and add more salt if you'd like.
• That's it. That's salad dressing. Serve over your favorite salad!

Notes

For sweetness, I love maple syrup in this, but sub any sweetener you like! Honey or agave work particularly well in this dressing.

Same for mustard - use anything you like! Dijon, stone ground, brown, or spicy mustard are all delicious in this. With Dijon mustard, this is similar to a classic French Dijon vinaigrette aka VERY yummy.

This is also wonderful as a marinade for chicken breast, just double the batch and marinate for 30 minutes or so before grilling or pan-searing some chicken.

Tried this recipe?Let me know how it was!