Greek Feta Dressing

This Greek salad dressing recipe is great to have around when you’ve got fresh veggies and you want something different from everyday Ranch dressing. Our family loves it mixed onto garbanzo beans (aka chickpeas), cucumber, and red onion. You could also add halved cherry tomatoes or diced roma. Ooh, and maybe avocado. Yum.

It starts, as so many Greek dressings do, with a simple extra virgin olive oil base. Lemon juice and red wine vinegar combined add the acidity and “tang.” Give it a shake or two of salt and pepper. Already at that point you have a really nice simple dressing that could go along with so many different flavor profiles.

To the base, add fresh dill, red onion, and a little zest. It’s still a nice blank template and you could even stop here for a truly delightful salad dressing.

But moving on, now you’ll add the mediterranean flavors that make it a Greek dressing! Crumble some feta cheese into the mix and stir in a dash of mint. Let it sit for an hour — if you can wait that long — then mix it with your Greek salad veggies and enjoy.

It’s so good!

You’ll want to double it or triple it even and eat it every day until all the vegetables are gone.

Keep the ingredients on hand all spring and summer so you can use it on your fresh garden veggies. When you have vegetables that need dressing, pull out a jar, dump homemade Greek salad dressing ingredients into it, shake it really well, and add the dressing to your salad or cut veggies. If you have a salad dressing shaker like this one, it’s even easier to pour.

Veggies that are good with this Greek salad dressing:

• romaine lettuce
• chickpeas/garbanzo beans
• white or red beans
• white or red onion
• cucumber
• green pepper (or any color sweet bell pepper)
• kalamata olives
• roma or cherry tomatoes (honestly, just use any tomatoes you have; these kind are just less juicy and retain their shape better)
• avocado

Honestly, I think you can be adventurous and toss in small pieces of almost any raw fresh vegetable, including broccoli or summer squash. It might not be traditional, but it would probably be good.

Greek Feta Salad Dressing

Here’s the Greek dressing recipe:

• 1/3 cup evoo (extra virgin olive oil)
• 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• the zest of about half a lemon
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill
• 2 teaspoons fresh chopped mint
• 1/4 cup red onion, diced small
• 1/8 cup crumbled feta cheese (I always add a little more to the salad itself if I have it. More feta is betta.)
• salt and pepper to taste

1. Combine the ingredients in a dressing shaker or mason jar, close the lid and shake well. (If you don’t have a dressing jar, just mix it in a bowl and stir it up well with a fork.)
2. Pour over or mix into fresh vegetables or legumes.

I would use your homemade Greek Feta Dressing within a couple of days, maybe up to a week, and definitely refrigerate it. If you want it to keep longer, leave out the fresh herbs and feta when you mix the dressing and just add them to the base before dressing your Greek salad. Also, if you’re making it to have on hand in the fridge, leave out the oil (because cold oil congeals) and stir in the oil just before adding it to the salad.