Maple Walnut Vinaigrette Recipe

Top your salad with some sweet nutty goodness! This Maple Walnut Vinaigrette Recipe combines sweet Vermont Maple syrup with walnuts and is pureed to form a creamy sweet and nutty dressing. It’s so tasty you’ll want to pour it on everything on your plate!

After my trip to Vermont a couple weeks ago I found myself craving all things maple. The Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes with Maple Buttercream  that I made were amazing. If you haven’t gotten a chance to make them yet they’d make a perfect Thanksgiving dessert so they should definitely be on your list.

I absolutely love making homemade dressings to add to my salads. In my opinion it just makes a salad taste so much better. My Raw Apple Cider Vinaigrette is my go to dressing that I make most often. It’s sweet, spicy tanginess is music to my tastebuds.

However, today I was craving something sweet and nutty. My Vermont visit left me craving Maple Syrup  and nothing goes better with Maple Syrup than Walnut.  This Maple Walnut Vinaigrette satisfied my craving and might just have become my new favorite dressing!

 

Tips for making this Maple Walnut Vinaigrette Recipe

I only have two tips for making this Maple Walnut Vinaigrette.

1. Blend it: I put mine in the single serve attachment of my Ninja Blender and pulsed it. You could also use an emulsifier to do this. Blending it will meld all of the ingredients really well and create a creamy texture. The creaminess just makes it cling to your salad ingredients making every bite so flavorful.
2. Use Real Maple Syrup: There is no substitute for real maple syrup. The best grade to use for cooking and adding to dressings would be a dark grade. It has a more robust flavor which will create a more flavorful dressing.

Ideas for using this Maple Walnut Vinaigrette Recipe

Maple Walnut Vinaigrette can be used in a variety of ways.

Topping your salad: I made a tasty Harvest Salad which included sweet baby greens, walnuts, apple slices, dried cranberries and cooked sweet potato slices. The Maple Walnut Vinaigrette was the perfect addition to top it with.

Marinading meats: It’s the perfect marinade for chicken or pork. My recommendation for using it as a marinade would be to skip blending it. Just whisk the ingredients and place meat or poultry in a zip lock baggy along with dressing. Seal and let it sit for at least 4 hours to overnight.

Other Salad combos: Use this dressing on potato salads, Quinoa Salads or pasta salads to give them a nice zesty, nutty sweetness.

 

This Maple Walnut Vinaigrette Recipe makes a large batch so it’s perfect for a large crowd. It would make a great addition to your Thanksgiving Day spread.