Jason is a blue cheese dressing dude. I tend to go with lighter dressings (not really into pouring like 30 grams of fat on my salad). So instead, I totally do the annoying girlfriend thing of stealing “just a couple bites” of his salad slathered in that rich and creamy blue cheese dressing, and then I go back to my healthier vinaigrette. Boring, whatever.
Spoiler alert: The nutritional information for the average blue cheese dressing is 10 grams of fat and 80 calories per 1 tablespoon! See, that’s what gets me.
So what I set out to do this Sunday was not only to make a blue cheese dressing that’s healthier for you, but to make one that would taste awesome. So awesome that Jason would never even pick up on the “light” factor at all.
Most blue cheese dressings use a combo of mayo, oil, blue cheese and buttermilk. Our secret ingredient for this light blue cheese dressing is non-fat Greek yogurt. The ratio of blue cheese to yogurt is 1 to 2. Then there’s some lemon juice and white vinegar, garlic and onion powder, salt and black pepper and a little squirt of agave. The dressing ended up being pretty thick so I thinned it out with a tablespoon of water.
It was seriously delicious. Like delicious enough to want to eat by the spoonful. You must try dipping golden delicious apples in it. Freaking wonderful. Anyway, the yogurt is basically undetectable and my subject had no idea he was eating anything that was lower in fat.
I made a little celery, celery leaf and frisee lettuce salad in celebration and we enjoyed our blue cheese dressing together for once.
As an aside, if you decide to make this salad, or just next time you put celery in a salad, be sure to get some celery with a lot of healthy leaves still intact. Celery leaves often get discarded, but they’re such a nice touch in a salad.
Recipe
Coop/prep time: 5 mins. Makes enough to dress about 4-6 salads.You need:
- 1/4 cup blue cheese finely chopped or in crumbles
- 1/2 cup non-fat Greek yogurt
- Juice of 1/2 a lemon
- 1 tablespoon white vinegar
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- Cracked black pepper to taste
- Sprinkle garlic powder
- Sprinkle onion powder
- Drizzle of honey or agave
Directions
- Finely chop and then break apart blue cheese into small crumbles. Combine blue cheese, Greek yogurt, lemon juice and vinegar in a bowl or jar and mix well. Add all seasonings and a drizzle of agave or honey and stir well with fork until cheese is no longer clumping up.
- If the cheese keeps getting stuck and/or clumping to the fork during stirring, just remove it and break it up and continue stirring. You need to totally mash up all the larger clumps and totally combine it so nobody picks up on the yogurt hiding in there! Just keep mixing until you cant taste the yogurt.
- The thickness of the dressing will vary depending on the brand of Greek yogurt you use. Some are really think so If necessary, add water (one tablespoon at a time) and stir until dressing reaches desired consistency.
26 Comments
Oh now you’ve gone and done it…. scratch blue cheese dressing that’s low in fat and tastes amazing? My Teen is a BC fanatic, in fact, I can’t get him to eat greens unless he can plop a few good blobs of BC dressing on them, and I swoon over it too, loving it on roasted potatoes and/or carrots. I will definitely be making this. And thank you. A million times.
Oy…just what I need. I’m a huge lover of blue cheese dressing but I’ve banned it from our apartment because I know how bad it is for me…and now that you’ve gone and made a delicious and healthy dressing, I might just have to bring the blue cheesy love back. You’re creating a monster here, do you understand?
indeed! i’d ginned up one like this years ago, and nearly forgot. i needed this lovely reminder. greek yogurt IS a marvel, isn’t it? has a place in our potato salads too, from time to time. love the celery leaf idea.
I’m really excited to try this out as a dip for a tailgate later today! Finally a “good” football food!
This looks amazing. Any idea of the calorie count of tablespoon vs. the 80 calories per tablespoon of the regular dressing?
Love your blog, by the way. Just discovered it via thekitchn.com.
Hm, I don’t have an exact calorie count, but I’d estimate that it’s at least half the calories of regular blue cheese dressing. Plus, I use the fat free Greek yogurt so the only fat comes from the blue cheese itself – whereas with the regular dressing you’re talking about mayo AND buttermilk fat :(
A whole cup of fat free Greek yogurt only has 120 cals, which is 7.5 cals per tablespoon. If this dressing is half and half, that would come out to 43.75 cals per tablespoon. Quite an improvement! Can’t wait to try it, thanks for sharing!
This was delicious! I did leave out the cinnamon, wasn’t sure it was meant to be included in the recipe. :) If it was, maybe I was missing something amazing!
ha! oh yea, that was a mistake. took it out ;) thanks!
So something I would have done! :) In my last comment I meant to say that I only had seasoned rice vinegar so I subbed that for both the white vinegar and the agave. It seemed to work out just fine, but maybe next time I’ll try it exactly as the recipe states. The flavor combo is just awesome – thanks for creating it! :)
Just made this and it came out wonderful! Didn’t have greek yogurt so I substituted light sour cream. Pairing this with spicy bbq boneless chicken tenderloins and placing on a bed of green leaf lettuce. Thanks for the recipe!
Thank you so much! I have been struggling with giving up blue cheese dressing for some time, and it has been so difficult because it is my favorite dressing. Most of the time I would rather have no salad at all than salad without blue cheese on it. This will totally save me!
Gabi,
Much flavor depends on the blue cheese brand. So what brand did you use?
Definitely have some items to add to my shopping list. I have refused to give up the BC Dressings on my salad, even though I knew it was bad for me. Can’t wait to try this. Wish I was creative as you are, Gabi! Thanks so much!
Carol, You’re right about that! Unfortunately, it’s been some time since I posted that recipe so I don’t recall which I used.
This is fantastic! I never eat this dressing because when I ever looked at the nutritional value I almost passed out LOL!! I replaced the yogurt with sour cream just because it’s what I had on hand and it’s AMAZING!! Thank you for sharing!
I made a recipe similar to this about a week ago. I used lowfat buttermilk to thin it out a bit – YUM!!
I’ll have to try the touch of sweetener this next round. I also leave out garlic and onion, so we can share a little with the Kitty. He does love stinky cheeses…
Thank you for posting. I am all set to try this, but have one question. My daughter and I love feta cheese. Would it taste as yummy using feta rather than blue cheese?? Thanks :)
I think it would. Give it a shot!
This dressing is delicious. I was suspicious of it at first…a clean, low-fat blue cheese dressing? But my doubts were put to rest. I did add a bit more blue cheese (I like the strong flavor) but adhered to the recipe otherwise. Raw green bell pepper slices are just as satisfying dipped in this as any blue cheese dressing I’ve ever had. Thanks Gabi!
Buttermilk is more like low fat yogurt than butter. The fat in BC dressing is from the cheese and the mayo, not buttermilk.
A DEFINITION
Buttermilk is the low-fat portion of milk or cream remaining after it has been churned to make butter. Today, buttermilk is not a byproduct of butter-making, but is made from nonfat or low-fat milk that is “cultured” with lactic acid bacteria. Cultured buttermilk is low in fat and calories, but maintains its traditional tangy flavor and creamy texture.
Can’t wait to try it! Thanks so much for the recipe!
did a rough over estimation of this recuipe and came out to 14.5 cal/TBS with 400 Cal/cup bleu cheese, 120 cal/cup non-fat greek, 1031 cal/cup honey estimated honey at 1 tbs in the entire recipe, my math is right don’t have to take my value if you don’t want to
just checked out some manufactured “light” blue cheese dressings and they are right on par with what i calculated
Wow Tyler! Thanks for the input. Much appreciated!
I want to tell you how absolutely DELICIOUS this recipe is! I, too, have all but eliminated BCD from my life due to its incredible unhealthiness. I made this tonight to go on a chef salad and it is amazing. So flavorful and I definitely don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything. I did not have bleu cheese so I used gorgonzola and followed everything else to a “T.”
Thanks so much for posting (and creating) this recipe. I will be sure to pass it on to friends and family.