This is a very heart healthy recipe, and tasty enough to get your kids to eat their veggies. This is also the “lite” version; less oil, stevia or erythritol for sweetener.
Something Special
We’ve made a video of this salad dressing which lists all the benefits of the ingredients. It’s quite amazing and not a bad video for beginners.
Ingredients
- 1 ¼ cup Apple Cider Vinegar
- 3 – 5 teaspoons Celtic Sea Salt
- ¼ cup (or a ¼ plus 2 teaspoons, optional) Swerve Confectionary Sweetener (powdered erythritol), or 6 – 8 scoops Better Stevia (to taste)
- 10 oz of Blueberries (from frozen/with juice, if fresh you’ll want to use more)
- ½ cup Pomegranate Juice Powder
- ½ cup Beet Juice Powder
- ½ cup Mangosteen Pericarp Powder
- ½ cup oil (the best option for this is MCT Oil)
- 2 ½ cups Filtered Water
- 1 teaspoon Xanthan Gum
- OPTION: To make it creamy, add ½ cup Coconut Milk Powder
Note: Options
We like to give options because no two people have the same tastes. I use Celtic Sea Salt as medicine so would opt for 5 teaspoons in my dressing. I like my dressing a bit tart, so I’d cut the sweeteners a bit. We love to give people options because food is our medicine and if it doesn’t taste good, you’re not going to take your medicine.
Directions
Warning: If using a NutriBullet, this will fill it up near the top. Be careful.
In your NutriBullet or extraction blender, put all the ingredients, making sure you add the Xanthan Gum last, because it can quickly clot. Blend thoroughly and serve.
This recipe is even heart healthier than its previous form. Adding the Mangosteen pericarp just turned it into a powerhouse of nutrition. (And you can get it at Simply the Best under Super Foods.)
Because oil and water do not blend well, shake well before serving. However, if you make this in a Nutribullet (or an extraction blender), because these utensils emulsify the ingredients, the oils tend not to separate out of the concoction, sometimes for a very long time.
Editor’s Note: all of the ingredients are discussed at length at this site. All of them. Because the fruits are anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and hypoglycemic, this salad dressing is perfect for your heart and for your inflammation. We’d love to tell you a salad a day will keep the heart attacks away, but the FDA and FTC won’t let us. But we can tell you that parents write to us telling us that their kids are enjoying salads for the first time in their lives.
The Blueberry Conundrum
Some parents wrote to me after a newsletter we published that mentioned a pretty recent study in which it was learned . . . well, here is what we published.
In this 2009 study, it was learned that mixing the two together (as milk, yogurt, and/or whey protein) not only impaired the antioxidant properties of the blueberries, but lowered overall a person’s antioxidant load to much less than what it would have been had not this combination been consumed.
Isn’t that a kick in the butt!
Not to be a spoil sport, but milk does the same thing to some of the benefits of chocolate.
They were concerned because now that they’ve gotten their kids to finally like salads, the kids are drinking milk at the dinner table and . . . “what’s a mother to do?”
Substitute Raspberries
I’d suggest using 2 cups of frozen, organic raspberries. They’re quite a bit tarter than blueberries, so you’ll probably want to use the high end options on the sweetener. That’s it.
Questions From Readers
Q: Why do you choose to use “juice powders” rather than the juices?
A: Powders are concentrated nutrition. We are told to get 5 servings a day of fruit and veggies. A good sized salad with this dressing can be five (or more) servings.
Q: Have you ever thought of using Extra Virgin Olive Oil instead. I understand it’s very healthy.
A: Yes, extra virgin olive oil is extremely healthy. However, because our mothers and spouses have always told us: “Go easy on that salad dressing! It’s where all the calories are!” we’ve chosen MCT oil, which is rejected by our fat cells and is burned off as extra energy. We just wanted our dressing to be guilt free so you can pour it on and get those servings of fruits and veggies.
Q: I see you add water and xanthan gum. Is this to keep the calories down? And if so, why use MCT oil?
A: Good question. We used to post two versions to every salad dressing, a “regular” and a “lite” version. We stopped that because if a person wants a regular version, just add more oil and cut out the water and xanthan gum. However, there are even calories in MCT oil and a late dinner can keep you awake at night with all this extra energy. Additionally, MCT oil is anti-inflammatory, and that is much of the purpose of all our recipes.
Q: Your salad dressing is anti-inflammatory. Have you ever considered using montmorency cherries?
A: You bet we have. We first searched for a powder, but they are ridiculously expensive. So we decided to use the concentrate that we used in Dawn’s Amritam. We had to cut the amount of water, because we were again shooting for concentrated nutrition and here is a recipe that substitutes the tart cherries for the pomegranate juice in this recipe. We also created a Blueberry Tart Cherry Vinaigrette, but because of the overwhelming flavor of the cherries, we increased the amount of oil to cut the flavor and it worked out well.
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