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Addictively delicious, this Spicy Cilantro Honey-Lime Dressing will rock your little salad-loving world!
Every now and then a salad dressing comes along that rocks my world. This Spicy Cilantro Honey-Lime Dressing is a perfect example!
Well, at least my culinary world. This Spicy Cilantro Honey-Lime Dressing is one of my world-rockers, and I'm thrilled to be able to share it with you, as I have a feeling it will rock your little culinary world too!
I've been working on this one for a couple of weeks now, tweaking it, testing it and refining it here and there. It's perfect now, and, with the parade of wonderful seasonal produce that's about to emerge on the scene, I think you're going to want to keep a jar of this dressing on hand all spring and summer. I know I will!
I got the inspiration for this recipe while scrolling through Allrecipes a while back. I noticed a TGIF copycat Cilantro-Lime Salad Dressing that had 331 5-star reviews. It sounded wonderful, so I gave it a try. It was delicious right out of the gate, but I had a few ideas to make it even better. I changed a few proportions and ingredients and if you look at the picture of the original dressing, you'll see that mine looks very different but the Allrecipe recipe was definitely my inspiration. I was thinking that perhaps I should call it a "kind of copycat of a copycat", but that probably wouldn't work real well with the search engines!
The dressing is loaded with fabulous flavor and works well on simple green salads as well as on salads with a variety of ingredients. It's also wonderful on grilled chicken, shrimp, steak, pork, etc and makes a healthy, delicious dip for chips or crudités. (I wouldn't mention this to anyone except you, but sometimes I'm tempted to drink the stuff - it's that good!)
One of the things that intrigued me about the original recipe was that, although it's a Mexican-inspired dressing, one of the ingredients is fresh ginger which is generally thought of as an Asian ingredient. Please, don't skip the ginger! It adds a very fresh, intriguing flavor to the dressing and blends deliciously with the other ingredients. If you're not a ginger fan, don't worry, you won't know it's in there - but you'll wonder what in the world makes this dressing so good. Well, I guess you won't really wonder, because I just spilled the beans. But do trust me!
I'm going to wrap it up here. I'm spending a few days in Nashville with a small group of bloggers and a delightful team from KitchenAid. We're going to get to sneak preview of some of their latest products and actually do some cooking in their amazing test kitchen here in Music City.
I'm honestly not very musically inclined, but cooking with KitchenAid makes my little heart sing! I'll be sharing more about my experience in an upcoming post, but right now, I'm going to jump in the shower and get ready to make culinary music!
In the meantime, whip up a batch of this dressing and try it on EVERYTHING! It will take you all of five minutes since all the ingredients are simply thrown together in the blender. Push the button and the magic will happen right before your eyes. You won't believe the gorgeous green color, and when you take the first little taste? Well, let's just say your world will be rocked too! Amen.
- 1 medium jalapeno pepper seeded and coarsely chopped*
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger root
- ¼ cup lime juice
- ¼ cup honey
- 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
- ¼ teaspoon salt add more to taste
- 1 cup packed cilantro leaves
- ½ cup extra virgin olive oil
-
Add all ingredients to a blender container. Cover and blend on high speed for about 2 minutes or until dressing is smooth and bright green in color. Store in refrigerator. Will keep for 4-5 days. Shake well before using.
* If you like things spicy, add the seeds along with the pepper.
Tracy says
Would this go on watermelon peach feta salad?
Chris Scheuer says
Hi Tracy, I think that would be fantastic! I just had a wonderful watermelon salad at a restaurant with a pepper jelly dressing. It was SO good!
Maralamo says
Why do you say that prep and cooking time is 9 h 14 min?.
Chris Scheuer says
It's not correct, Maralamo. I changed recipe plugins a while back and it messed up all of my times. With over 1400 recipes it's taking me a while to correct them all.
Adria says
Five Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This is simple to make with fabulous fresh, addictive flavor. I could just keep eating it. Yum!
Great concoction on this Chris
Adria Hahn says
I have to add a note to this, I realised I made the dressing and never added the oil. I often reduce oil amounts dramatically, but in this case I forgot to go back and put it in. I've since made it with and without any oil. The flavors are over the top fresh and dynamic without the oil. Give it a taste before you add the oil and see if you like it even better.
olivia says
Just made this and have had to force myself to stop drizzling it onto last night's chicken remnants before anyone even gets home for dinner. So yum. I made it for a salad tonight, which will accompany a coconut-curried lentil soup and naan .... hm, which reminds me - need to put some aside for naan-dunking. Thanks:))