Soy and Ginger Salad Dressing

I love this soy and ginger salad dressing and use it for so much.

It makes a great dressing for a sliced cucumber salad. The toasted sesame seeds give the salad that bit of crunch and distinctive sesame seed taste.

I know this mixture is referred to as a salad dressing, and it’s a delicious one, but you can it is very versatile and you can use it for so many other things.

For example:

This Asian salad dressing is perfect as a stir fry sauce.

I love it as a stir fry sauce over chicken and vegetables like peppers, onions, cabbage, celery, snow peas and carrots. I let the chicken marinate in a bit of the sauce before I cook it to give it wonderful flavor, then cook the chicken and vegetables, add extra sauce to coat it all and enjoy.

Make an Asian style cole slaw with cabbage carrots and your favorite cole slaw vegetables and pour this soy and ginger sauce over it. It’s a flavorful change from your standard picnic coleslaw.

Here is another healthy dinner salad recipe starring quinoa. If you are not familiar with it, quinoa is an easy to cook grain that is gluten free and tastes great mixed with vegetables and other flavors as a hot dish or cold salad.

Here this ginger soy salad dressing is added to a salad of quinoa, vegetables like green beans and roasted Brussels sprouts and topped with peanuts (or pumpkin seeds) for a healthy dinner salad.

Ingredients for Ginger Soy Salad Dressing

The ingredients for this ginger salad dressing are pretty simple and ingredients that you probably have on hand, especially if you cook Asian food on occasion.

First of all we have sesame oil. I just love sesame oil. It gives stir fries and whatever else you use it in that extra bit of flavor.

In your grocery store you will probably find both plain sesame oil and toasted sesame oil. You can use either one in this recipe.

I tend to go to the toasted sesame oil. I find it tastier and that it adds an extra dimension of flavor to any dish I use it in.

You don’t need much sesame oil so be careful if you are modifying the recipe. A little really does go a long way.

Fresh ginger is our next ingredient. Again fresh ginger is found pretty much everywhere now, so you shouldn’t need to go far to find it.

I really recommend using the fresh ginger if you can find it. It really does add more flavor than dried ground ginger.

Soy sauce is in all of our cupboards. The original recipe that a friend gave me called for low sodium soy sauce. You can certainly use that if you wish. I personally like that bit of saltiness that regular soy sauce adds. Suit your own taste buds on this one.

The original recipe called for apple cider vinegar. It’s the vinegar I love using because it’s tasty and has a lot of added healthy benefits.

That said, Asian rice wine vinegar is delicious in this salad dressing too.

Fresh garlic, of course. The recipe uses 2 cloves of garlic, but feel free to add another if you love garlic as much as I do.

Top it off with 2 tablespoons of sesame seeds, either all regular sesame seeds or half white and half black sesame seeds.

Toasting Sesame Seeds

It is important to toast the seeds lightly before you add them to the ginger salad dressing. Toasting amps up the flavor of sesame seeds a lot.

To toast the seeds just put them into a dry frying pan on medium low heat for a few minutes, until you see them start to brown a bit.

You really need to keep an eye on the pan as the seeds are toasting. They can go from toasted to burned in just a minute.

And that’s it for ingredients.

Tips for Making Ginger Soy Salad Dressing

The original recipe for my Asian salad dressing called for a 1/2 cup of water added to the mixture. I found that amount of water was far too much and really watered down the flavors in this wonderful dressing.

I have cut the amount of water in the dressing by quite a bit. I only add about 1 tablespoon of water. I would say you can add up to 1/4 cup of water. After that I think you have to start playing with the recipe too much to amp up the flavors.

You can also omit the water entirely at first, taste it and see how you like it as is. Then add a bit of water to thin it down a bit if you need to.

As I said above, another tip is to use fresh ginger and fresh garlic. In this recipe, fresh really does add a lot of extra flavor that you wouldn’t get with dried, powdered versions.

It is really important that this ginger soy dressing has a chance to sit for a while after it’s made.

If possible, make the dressing earlier in the day that you will be using it. That allows the flavors to develop and meld together before eating it. It really does make a difference to the taste of your dish.

If you like this ginger salad dressing, here is another Asian inspired sauce – orange sesame sauce over broccoli

You’ll find more great ideas browsing our Asian recipe section here.

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