Italian Dressing
Homemade Italian dressing is easy to make and tastes SO MUCH better than store-bought. It's made in just 5-minutes with kitchen-staple ingredients and keeps well for weeks so you can make a quick and healthy salad whenever you want.
Complete the meal with Italian braised chicken with tomatoes and olives and a side of no yeast bread with herbs and cheese. And if you love zesty vinaigrettes, also try our lifesaving lemony salad dressing!
What is Italian dressing
Despite its name, Italian dressing is actually an American creation. It's a vinaigrette inspired by Italian flavors. Olive oil, wine vinegar, lemon juice, and Italian seasoning give it lots of zesty flavors. We like to add garlic powder and some parmesan cheese to make it even more delicious.
While store-bought Italian dressing contains sugar, we skip this as the sweetness makes the dressing taste odd (and we prefer to go sugar-free most of the time.) Making your own homemade Italian dressing also means that you get to skip all the stabilizers and preservatives found in the bottles in the grocery store.
READ MORE: Homemade Italian Seasoning Recipe
How to make Italian dressing
Like most salad dressing recipes, this one is also very easy to make. Here's what you're going to do:
- Put the ingredients into a jar with a tight-fitting lid.
- Now shake shake shake.
That's it! In less than 5 minutes you've made yourself a delicious salad dressing that you can use all week.
Full recipe instructions in the recipe card below.
How to store this salad dressing
The best way to store salad dressing is in a jar in your fridge. We use a glass Mason jar with a tight-fitting screw top lid. Give the jar a good shake to mix it up again before using it.
How long does homemade Italian dressing last?
This salad dressing will last for at least 2 weeks in your fridge. NOTE: if you use fresh garlic instead of garlic powder, the dressing will only last for 1 week.
How to use Italian salad dressing
The most obvious way to use Italian dressing is on a salad. We love using baby salad greens, arugula, or green leaf lettuce mixed with crunchy veggies than tossed with this dressing. But this zest Italian dressing is good on more than just greens. Here are a few other ways to use it:
- Make Italian dressing chicken <– this is SO GOOD!!
- Pour it over chopped potatoes then bake them until they're crispy.
- Use it to cook fish in a skillet.
- Serve it as a dip for veggies.
- Mix it into rice or your favorite cooked grains.
Popular salad dressing recipes
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Italian Dressing Recipe
If you love this recipe as much as we do, let us know with a 5-star rating!
Ingredients
- Ā½ cup olive oil
- Ā¼ cup red or white wine vinegar
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon Italian seasoning, try our homemade Italian seasoning!
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder OR 1 finely minced garlic clove, see notes
- Ā½ teaspoon EACH: sea salt and pepper
- Optional: Ā¼ cup finely grated parmesan cheese, see notes
Instructions
- Combine all the ingredients in a jar with a tight-fitting lid and shake well.ĀĀ½ cup olive oil, Ā¼ cup red or white wine vinegar, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, 1 tablespoon Italian seasoning, 1 teaspoon garlic powder OR 1 finely minced garlic clove, Ā½ teaspoon EACH: sea salt and pepper, Optional: Ā¼ cup finely grated parmesan cheese
- Store the dressing in your fridge for up to 2 weeks. (See notes) Shake well to mix the ingredients each time before you use it.Ā
Notes
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This homemade dressing is very delicious and easy to make. I will use this dressing in many recipes in the future. After marinading my pork chops for 8 hours, they were tender and juicy. I used red wine- I will try white wine sometime soon as well. The store bought doesn’t taste good to me now and it is high in Sodium.
Hello, The recipe for home made Italian salad dressing looks great. Quick question…would you use olive oil or extra virgin olive oil? Thank you!
Usually extra virgin, but we love the robust flavor. If you’d like a more subtle olive oil flavor, go for regular olive oil.
WoW
WoW
This is an amazing recipe!
I made this for a cucumber and tomato salad and there were no leftovers.
This is so easy peasy. Ā I always have fresh lemons, EVOO and red & white wine vinegar plus my own home grown and dried herbs so this is now a total go to. Ā
Thank you so much.
Ā
This dressing is wonderful. I’ve made it 3 times now and am not tired of it at all. I can’t even say how much better it is than the stuff I used to buy in the store. Thank you so much for this recipe!