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.
12 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!