15 Feb Modern Garden Salad with Homemade Ranch Dressing

Here is a twist on a classic garden salad with golden-brown potatoes, roasted bell pepper, crunchy snow peas, and creamy homemade ranch dressing. It’s always great to experiment with traditional recipes and give them a new life. By adding roasted veggies, we could turn a regular salad into a substantial meal and still keep it healthy. I also decided to add a bit of summer freshness with snow peas and aromatic dill. That’s why this salad feels like a perfect summer dish, except you can cook it all year round and enjoy its bright flavor combination.

I highly recommend you to cook all of your dressings from scratch. Especially the creamy ones. The reason is this way you can control the quality of ingredients and the number of calories. The whole process of preparing homemade dressing will take you only a few minutes, but will tremendously improve the taste of your dishes. For a Ranch dressing, you can even cook your own mayonnaise; it’s not hard at all.

TIP: To cut some extra calories use low-fat yogurt instead of sour cream.

It’s a great salad for a party or potluck. I like to serve ours on a big platter with just a touch of homemade ranch dressing on top. The rest of the dressing we put on the side.

Modern Garden Salad with Homemade Ranch dressing

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Ingredients

  

For the Salad:

• baby potatoes – 1 lb
• red bell pepper – 1 halved, seeded, and cored
• olive oil – 1 tablespoon
• salt – 1/2 teaspoon
• butter lettuce – 10 leaves torn into bite-sized pieces
• mini heirloom tomatoes or cherry tomatoes – 1/2 lb halved
• snow peas – 1 1/2 cup sliced
• small purple onion – 1 thinly sliced
• fresh dill – 2 tablespoons finely chopped

For the Ranch Dressing:

• mayonnaise – 5 tablespoons
• sour cream – 5 tablespoons
• lemon juice – 1 teaspoon
• garlic – 1 clove
• salt – to taste
• freshly ground black pepper – 1/2 teaspoon
• paprika – 1/4 teaspoon
• chopped dill – 1 tablespoon

Instructions

 

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
• Halve the potatoes and place them on a baking sheet along with the bell pepper halves.
• Drizzle the veggies with olive oil and season with salt. Mix well.
• Roast the vegetables for 25-30 minutes, until tender.
• Remove the peppers and potatoes from the oven.
• Place the peppers in a bowl; cover tightly with plastic wrap (so they steam) and let cool until slightly warm. Then cut into strips.