Vegan Ranch Dressing
June 9, 2011
This raw vegan ranch dressing is rich and creamy. You’d never know it was dairy free.
Vegan Ranch Dressing
This raw vegan ranch dressing is rich and creamy. You’d never know it was dairy free.
Prep Time 15 minutes
Total Time 15 minutes
Servings 2 cups
Calories 355 kcal
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup (180ml) filtered water
- 1 cup (140g) raw cashews, soaked and drained
- 1 tablespoon (15ml) fresh lemon juice
-
1
tablespoon (15ml)
apple cider vinegar
- 1 date soaked, then drained
- 1 teaspoon (4g) minced garlic (1 clove)
- 1/2 teaspoon (2g) onion powder
- 1 1/2 teaspoons (9g) Herbamare
- 1 tablespoon (3g) finely chopped flat-leaf parsley, plus more to taste
- 1 tablespoon (5g) finely chopped green onions, plus more to taste
- 1/2 teaspoon (0.5g) finely chopped fresh dill, plus more to taste
Instructions
-
Throw the water, drained cashews, lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, drained dates, garlic, red onion, and Herbamare into your blender, and blast on high for 30 to 60 seconds until smooth and creamy.
-
Stir in the fresh herbs, and add more to taste.
Recipe Notes
Recipe adapted from Uncooking 101
Comments 66
This is AMAZING!!!!!
I know! I LOVE this recipe!!!! Thanks Eva 🙂
this could be great as a salad dressing…nutritious dressing!
Yes! This is a FANTASTIC salad dressing when you thin it out. I actually prefer it that way 🙂
Hey Piggy Alex =)
This dressing IS S’BLENDED!
I will be featuring more of my favourite websites and blogs in the coming months as part of my new “Trough Swap” series coming to my new site this week.
I am really excited about it!
Looks fantastic! I think I could eat that for a whole lunch…with an endless supply of raw crudites. Yes, yes!
YES! It is SOOO good that way!
What if you are allergic to tree nuts and peanuts can you offer any suggestions?
You could use a base of tofu or coconut meat. You will just need to tweak the other flavours.
What did I do wrong? The ACV is quite pronounced and it just doesn’t taste very good. I guess I will try to doctor it up. If anyone had a suggestion I would love to hear from you. Thanks
Reduce the ACV by half next time and add to taste. It is quite pronounced. You can also add more water.
Excuse me for asking but what is ‘herbamare’ ? it’s an ingredient called for in the better than ranch dressing. 🙂
Sorry, Herbamare is a proprietary blend of dried herbs by the Swiss naturapath A Vogel. It is widely available in health food stores and is absolutely delicious!
Suzabelle: Add in 1/2 the quantities of lemon juice and apple cider vinegar and then add more to taste. You want might to add in some more filtered water to thin it out too. I found it a bit full-on the first time I tasted it. But know that if you thin it out and pour it over a salad it is DIVINE.
Stacy: Herbamare is a proprietary blend of dried vegetables and herbs from A Vogel. It is like a salt/flavor alternative that you can find at all heatlh food stores and some mainstream grocers.
How long do you soak the dates for?
=)
Warbutton627
Hey Piggy Lindsey,
It is best to soak the dates for at least a few hours to hydrate them. But I made this in a hurry the other day and only soaked them for two hours and the dressing was delicious.
You only need to soak the dates for about 1/2 an hour to two hours.
My son is sensitive to the cashew family (cashews, pistacchios, mangoes), is there another nut or other food that we could use to substitute the cashews? I’d love to make a Ranch-style dip to send in his school lunchbox. He’s sensitive to legumes (except peas and lentils), dairy, corn, soy, wheat, peanuts, watermelon, beef, chicken, salmon, tuna, sole celery, and asparagus. I’m new to all this and I only have one week before school starts, yikes! Help, please!
Suni
Oh, your son sounds like my niece!
It can be so challenging to find something but we can work around it!
Can he tolerate fresh coconut meat or macadamias? You could make a vegan ranch style dip with those?
I will shoot you a private email and we can chat about some more options for school snacks 🙂
oh my goodness! i nearly ate the whole batch in one sitting. thank you for such a great recipe!
Hey Tracee,
Isn’t that recipe A-MAZING! Hard to quit eating!
Check out more of Eva’s recipes.
She is wonderful 🙂
Can you use anything else other then the cashews in this recipe? Trying to avoid using so many nuts and fresh coconut meat is not my favorite. Thanks
Hey Dianne,
You could use tofu as the base for this dressing.
It won’t be raw but you will get a similar flavour and consistency.
Do the cashews make a big difference in taste? I just made this and used tofu – waaaayyy to acidic. I ended up washing my salad off and using store bought ranch. I would like to try this again but I don’t want to waste the cashews as they are sooo expensive in my area
Hey Dianne,
To make this less acidic start with just a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar and a teaspoon of lemon juice and keep adding to taste until you get the flavour you want. This dressing is better with the cashews.
Try avocado instead of nuts or tofu.
This was great…yes a little acidic…bytes loved it….I couldn’t wait to chill ate it on my kale salad..yum
Yes! This has a little bite to it! LOL!
I love to water it down a bit and it is DEELISH!
Do you put green onions before blending
Hey Michelle,
I have made it both ways.
I have blended the green onions and also stirred them through.
I like blending them better for depth of flavour.
Enjoy 🙂
This is such a great ranch…second batch Ive done so far… Love it with kale
Yes! LOVE this with kale too 🙂
So glad you are enjoying this!
WOW is right! Eva ROCKS!
So happy to share these amazing recipes and so glad you checked out Eva and her fantastic site! LOVE LOVE LOVE her!
I was just curious what the nutritional value is such as the calorie and carb break
Hey Kali,
As I am not a nutritionist, I do not list nutritional profiles for my recipes.
You can punch the ingredients into Cronometer or Nutrition Data and found out all of this information.
I hope this helps.
It would be helpful to know how much this makes and what the nutritional data would be on this recipe.
Hey Dana.
Because I am not a nutritionist or dietician, I don’t post nutritional profiles on my recipes. Sorry about that. But, you can plug the ingredients into third party software like nutrition data or cronometer. I hope this helps.
What can I substitute for herbamare?
Herbarmare is just a proprietary blend of herbs and spices with some natural salt. You could add any blend of herbs you like to this.
This is the BEST garlic spread! All natural no preservatives a must taste spread. After one taste your taste buds crave another tantalizing bite!
Raw garlic, olive oil, lemon juice & salt . Dip a pita chip in it. Spread on pizza, mix in mashed potatoes, dip a bite of BBQ’d meat & grilled bell pepper! It’s yummy
Oh, I am so pleased you enjoyed this. I LOVE this recipe too.
This is amazing! Thanks for sharing 🙂
Yes! Eva’s recipes are amazing. I love this one and make it so often.
enjoy!
OMG! This is amazing. This is exactly what Ive been looking for but better! I can not believe how good this tastes. Thank you so much for sharing this.
Wonderful. I love this recipe, too. I am so glad you enjoyed it.
I used kombucha instead of the ACV. YUM! Thanks, great recipe!
Fabulous idea! So glad it was a success Dawn!
Will this last in the fridge for a week if I make it ahead of time?
Yes, it lasts for about 5 to 7 days in the fridge.
Makes a great coleslaw too. Good stuff, no oil.
Awesome idea! Thanks for sharing Phillip!
So delish! I subbed a tsp of coconut sugar for the dates and it worked fine. Also added some organic mayo for flavor.
Awesome. Thanks for sharing your experience. Love it!
The store didn’t have plain cashews (only ones with BHT) so I used macadamia nuts instead. YUM! This recipe is awesome.
Awesome. Great to know. I love macadamias!! Thanks for sharing your tweak.
I have a jar of Bragg organic Sprinkle (24 herbs and spices). Is this anything like Herbavare? I have never tried either one.
It is a different proprietary blend. So, not the same. Sorry. You could try it in this recipe. But, the ingredients are so expensive I wouldn’t want you to spend the money making it and be disappointed.
Are you sure that 1 1/2 TBSP of Herbamare is correct? It is REALLY salty with that amount to the point it was inedible. Wasted expensive cashews and herbs because of that. And it is way too sour. Definitely needs to cut down on the Herbamare and the ACV or lemon juice.
Thankyou so much for sharing your experience. I am so sorry the recipe didn’t work for you with these quantities. It is so annoying when you’ve purchased expensive ingredients and that happens. This is not my recipe, and it did work beautifully when I made it to post. But, that was several years ago, and I haven’t made it since. I will make it when I get home from my shoot in the next couple of months and check. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.
I’m making this tonight! I recently became vegan but I’ve been having a hard time with dressings as most of them are basically pure oil. Can’t wait to try this recipe! Looks delish!
Great! I hope you enjoyed it.
Very nice consistency, however, I didn’t like the all-pervading taste of vinegar, so will leave that out next time.
Sorry about that Susie, I suggest adding the vinegar gradually in small amounts until you get the balance you like. You are probably going to need just a splash to get a tang. Let me know how you go if you decide to give it another go.
How long do you soak the cashews for? The link appear to be broken 🙁
Sorry Jennifer, I went through a site upgrade and some links got broken. I have amended the link. The soaking instructions are below. Cashews are a short-soak nut – 2 hours. Try not to soak them for any longer or their precious oils will be destroyed. If you want to soak the quick way, cover in boiled water out of the kettle for 10 minutes and then drain and rinse. This will kill live enzymes, but will soften the cashews in order to get the smoothest consistency with a conventional blender.
http://healthyblenderrecipes.com/hints_tips/soaking_nuts_seeds_grains