If you’re not a huge salad fan, maybe you just haven’t meet the right dressing to sweep your off your feet. Our homemade Oil Free Vegan Thousand Island Dressing is just that dressing that will give you heart eyes when looking at your new and improved salad. Rich, tangy, healthy and refined sugar free, this delicious dressing is fast, easy, and the perfect POW of flavor for salads and dipping veggies. Deliciously bold undertones with creamy, decadent cashews will hook you with the first bite. Perfect on your favorite veggie bowl, it is sure to absolutely delight your taste buds, making it this week’s awesome Whip It Up Wednesday recipe. Whole Food Plant Based, vegan, plant based, oil free, refined sugar free, no highly processed ingredients, and gluten free.
Ameera here!
This week’s Whip It Up Wednesday is our utterly delicious Oil Free Vegan Thousand Island Dressing. Mom and I are making our way through a huge list of “must make” salad dressings. When we started our research to make a Thousand Island dressing, the thing that stumped us was “the pickles.” Now you might think that that is not a big deal, but those little pickle pieces are inherent to a Thousand Island dressing.
Honestly, we could not find a single dill or sweet pickle that we felt didn’t have tons and tons of chemicals, dyes, or sugar (depending if you wanted dill, sweet, or bread & butter.) We finally landed on using a simple refrigerator dill pickle. What’s funny is that this dressing is so good, you don’t even need to add the chopped pickle pieces to this dressing.
Yes, it is that good. It is so creamy, tangy, and delicious. This dressing will knock your socks off with its oh so satisfying rich flavors.
Whip it up Wednesday
As you already know, every Wednesday, we feature a quick and easy recipe that can be “whipped up” in 20 minutes or less. This recipe can be made in a few quick minutes which really helps speed things up in the kitchen.
Our Oil Free Vegan Thousand Island Dressing is the perfect accompaniment for your veggie/salad bowls, or simply over some steamed veggies. It is a burst of deliciousness that is sure to put a smile on your face.
This post contains affiliate links, and we may receive a very small commission if you purchase through those links at no additional cost to you. Thank you for supporting Monkey and Me Kitchen Adventures! For more information, see our disclosures here.
Veggie Bowl Fun
Here’s how we prepared this bowl of healthy tastiness:
- Bed of salad greens
- Carrot ribbons
- Roasted seasoned garbanzo beans
- Tomato slices
- Beets and Cabbage Raw Probiotic Kraut
- Red onion slices
- Radish Slices
- Shredded Red Cabbage
- Sprinkle of hemp seeds
- Sprinkle of pepitas
- Sprinkle of microgreens
- Oil Free Vegan Thousand Island Dressing
WFPB Thousand Island Dressing
This Oil Free Vegan Thousand Island Dressing hits all the high notes for everything a great salad dressing should be: healthy, delicious, boasting no oil, no processed ingredients, and no processed sugar. Give it a try on your next salad. It is crazy awesome!
We hope you enjoy our new Whip It Up Wednesday quick and easy ideas! If you try it, we would love to know if you enjoy it as much as we do!
Looking for most fabulous WFPB dressings?
Check out these beauties:
Products Used:
- High-Speed blender
Oil Free Vegan Thousand Island Dressing
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Total Time: 10 minutes
- Yield: 1 Cup 1x
- Category: Dressing
Description
If you’re not a huge salad fan, maybe you just haven’t meet the right dressing to sweep your off your feet. Our homemade Oil Free Vegan Thousand Island Dressing is just that dressing that will give you heart eyes when looking at your new and improved salad. Rich, tangy, healthy and refined sugar free, this delicious dressing is fast, easy, and the perfect POW of flavor for salads and dipping veggies. Deliciously bold undertones with creamy, decadent cashews will hook you with the first bite. Perfect on your favorite veggie bowl, it is sure to absolutely delight your taste buds, making it this week’s awesome Whip It Up Wednesday recipe. Whole Food Plant Based, vegan, plant based, oil free, refined sugar free, no highly processed ingredients, and gluten free.
Ingredients
- ½ cup raw cashews
- ½ cup water
- 1 teaspoon tomato paste
- 2 Tablespoons apple cider vinegar
- 1 Tablespoon + 1 teaspoon organic maple syrup
- 2 teaspoons white miso *
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
- 1 teaspoon sweet paprika
- 1/8 teaspoon chili powder
- ¼ teaspoon dried ground mustard powder
- Pinch celery seed
- ½ teaspoon sea salt (+/-) *
- 1/8 teaspoon black pepper
- 2 Tablespoons finely chopped pickles (of choice) – optional *
Instructions
- In a small bowl, cover the raw cashews in boiling water, set aside to soak for 20 minutes. Or place raw cashews in a small sauce pan cover with water and boil for 10 minutes.
- In the meantime, measure out all your remaining ingredients (except the pickles) directly into the high-speed blender, then set aside.
- After 10 or 20 minutes (depending on the cashew softening method), drain the cashews and discard the water, then add the cashews into the high-speed blender with all the dressing ingredients and emulsify until smooth.
- Taste test the dressing and add more seasonings, if needed.
- If adding pickles, add the chopped pickles now directly into the high-speed blender and pulse for 2 seconds.
Notes
*Miso: We used Miso Master Organic Mellow White Premium Lite Miso, Certified Gluten Free. Miso really lends itself to balancing flavors when you don’t use oil. You can also substitute with chickpea miso for a soy free version.
*Pickles: Thousand Island dressing is known for having either sweet or dill pickles as an essential ingredient. We could not find a compliant sweet or dill pickle. We used a refrigerator pickle. This WFPB dressing is absolutely delicious without the pickles, so they are not an essential ingredient in this recipe.
*Sea Salt: Please adjust the sea salt based upon your family’s sea salt preferences and/or based upon dietary needs.
*Serving: Makes approximately 1 cup of dressing.
*Storage: Refrigerate and use within 5 days.
This post contains affiliate links, and we may receive a very small commission if you purchase through those links at no additional cost to you. Thank you for supporting Monkey and Me Kitchen Adventures! For more information, see our disclosures here.
Wow, I just made this for a veggie-burger-topped farmer’s market salad I intended to eat for breakfast. It’s such a good dressing. Thousand Island has always been my favorite, although, I rarely eat it, for obvious reasons. I’ll be using your recipe all of the time!
Hi there Michelle 🙂
Yayy!!! We are SO glad that you enjoyed this dressing! Love that you used it with a veggie-burger-topped farmer’s market salad, sounds so delish! Thank you so much for taking the time to write; we truly appreciate your wonderful feedback <3
-Ameera and Robin 🙂
Amazing dressing! We love it. I am not big on strong vinegar flavor dressings or dressings made from Tofu so I was pleased to stumble upon this recipe. We tried both the catalina and this one and they are now part of the favorites! Definitely a FIVE STAR Recipe! Thank you!
Hi there Heather 🙂
Yaaayyy! Thank you SO much for your kind words! We are soooo excited that you enjoyed this dressing and our Catalina dressing as well! We truly appreciate you taking the time to write such wonderful feedback, it means a lot to us! <3
-Ameera and Robin 🙂
AWESOME recipe~ I made it to put on a Tempeh Ruben!
Hi there Jeff 🙂
Thank you so much for giving this recipe a try! We are so glad you enjoyed it, and bet that Tempeh Ruben was amazing! Thank you so much for your wonderful feedback and support!
-Ameera and Robin 🙂
Can raw cashew butter be uded as a sub for soaking cashews?
Hi there Linda 🙂
Thank you so much for reaching out to us. We have not substituted cashew butter for the cashews, but we think it would work. You may want to start with a smaller amount and increase as desired.
-Ameera and Robin 🙂
Honestly, I just can’t believe how every single recipe I try is a success!
Hi there Sara 🙂
Yaaayyy!!! We are SO excited to hear that you’ve been enjoying our recipes! Thank you so much for this amazing feedback – we appreciate it!
-Ameera and Robin 🙂
I’ll need to soak the cashews overnight because of my blender. I’ll also need to eat less of this than I want to eat! Thank you, Ameera!
Hi there M V 🙂
Yes, you’ll want to make sure that the cashews blend up nicely to create a smooth dressing. And we completely agree, it’s hard not eating this dressing by the spoonful LOL.
-Ameera and Robin 🙂
Yum! LOVE this! I did alter a couple things to suit my needs; because I eat raw during the day I swapped the tomato paste for sundried tomatoes and I did use sunflower seeds rather than expensive cashews.
Hi there Terra 🙂
Wooooot! We are so thrilled that you enjoyed this recipe. Thank you so much for sharing your adjustments with us. We appreciate you sharing your awesome feedback and for taking the time to write.
-Ameera and Robin 🙂
This dressing is fantastic. I didn’t have pickles, which I know would’ve taken this to the next level, but it was still amazing! Will be making this again and again.
Hi there Monique 🙂
Woo hoo!!! We are so glad that you enjoyed this dressing and will be making it again and again! Pickles do add a delicious zingy pop of flavor and hope you enjoy this dressing even more with them 😀 We appreciate your awesome feedback and for taking the time to write.
-Ameera and Robin 🙂
I really enjoyed this dressing. I can hardly wait to try your others! I liked this so much, I tried it on purple potatoes that I mashed. Just drizzled it over the purple mash–it looked and tasted wonderful.
Hi there Jamie 🙂
Yaaaay!!! We are so thrilled to hear that you enjoyed this dressing. We appreciate you sharing your awesome feedback with us. Drizzling over potatoes sounds SUPER yummy!!
-Ameera and Robin 🙂
This is dangerously good. Thousand Island has been my favorite dressing since I was a kid. Due to a substitution, I’ve taken this in a non-Thousand Island direction, and may have a new favorite dressing. I only had smoked paprika and hot paprika in stock. I used the smoked paprika, and love the smokey flavor it added. I added Mount Olive Simply Relish in place of the pickles the first few times I made it. I couldn’t really tell the relish was in there, so I tried leaving it out of the double batch I just made. With the previous… Read more »
Hi there Kevin 🙂
WOOO HOOO! We are so happy that you enjoyed this recipe. Thank you so much for sharing your delicious adjustments and wonderful review. We appreciate you taking the time to write.
-Ameera and Robin 🙂
Hi there ! This looks amazing ! I am trying to figure out what would be best to substyfor the cashews ?! We can’t do any nuts 🫣
Hi there Heather,
Thank you for your question. You could try silken tofu, most of the time silken tofu is a good substitute. You will have to play around a tad on the amount of silken tofu and other ingredients may need ramped up.
-Ameera and Robin
This Thousand Island dressing was easy to make and delicious! Thank you!
Hi there Lori,
YAYYYY!!! We are thrilled that you gave this recipe a try and enjoyed it. Thank you so much for taking time to leave us a great review.
-Ameera and Robin