This buttermilk salad with chives and Parmesan is both creamy and refreshing, and unlike many other creamy salad dressings – it’s actually quite healthy for you!
Weeknight Salads
Buttermilk salad dressing doesn’t take much time at all to make. Still, to make things easier, I usually make a batch of it at the start of a given week. One recipe gets us through about 4 personal size, or 2 family-size, salads during the week. It’s also very easy to double up the recipe to have more dressing on hand. Buttermilk dressing keeps for about a week. In my opinion, it actually gets a bit better after the ingredients have sat together for at least 1 day in the refrigerator. I think the chives and the parmesan need some time to let their flavors leech into the rest of the dressing, making it more flavorful after a day or so.
(In case you’re in a salad kind of mood, here are some other fast salad options!)
Health & Calories
This dressing relies on buttermilk and parmesan for creamy flavor. I recommend getting cultured buttermilk if you can find it – that way you also benefit from the probiotics. The buttermilk is creaminess and tang, and the Parmesan adds a richness and more complex flavor. Both the cheese and the buttermilk have good amounts of calcium. The olive oil adds to a richer, more satisfying flavor profile, and also contributes some good fat.
This dressing clocks in at about 120 calories per serving, assuming a generous pour – about 1/4 cup of dressing. Not terrible at all for a salad that tastes so creamy and delicious. I could eat this salad all spring and summer long – especially once its tomato season. The creamy dressing works really well with juicy ripe tomatoes. But it also works really well with just plain leaves, which is more commonly our salad of choice these days as we try to keep dinners simple.
Toppings
Like I said, I like to eat this buttermilk salad plain. But occasionally I get fancy and add tomatoes, avocados, pine nuts . . . and/or “healthy” croutons.
I believe I’ve mentioned before how I love making warm croutons by making a piece of toast in our toaster, then cutting it up into squares while it’s still warm. I toss the pieces onto a pre-tossed salad at the last minute before I eat it. It makes the salad feel so much like a treat. You can do this with a healthier bread (like a crusty whole wheat sourdough or seeded loaf), because any crusty bread picks up the parmesan flavor and tastes amazing with the creamy dressing.
I’ve even done this with Ottolenghi’s beet, goat cheese, and caraway seed bread (a recipe from his book Ottolenghi Simple, one of my favorite cookbooks.) It’s an amazing add-on if you happen to have it around (not sure why you would, but just throwing it out there). Point being that you can take pretty much any kind of bread, toast it, cut it up into little squares, and toss it around with your salad and feel like you’re indulging in a delicious treat. Crusty on the outside and warm and chewy inside. Much better than the deep-fried commercial version.
Baked Falafel on Salad?!
I used to be a major fan of the Hummus Tahina salad from Sweetgreen. I shamelessly ordered it 4-5 times a week while I was working for about a year straight. Sweetgreen was also conveniently less than a block away from our office, so I was able to quickly dash out, grab my Hummus Tahina salad, and run back into the office.
Inspired by Sweetgreen’s Hummus Tahina, one of the variations I like to do on this salad is to top it with some frozen falafel (Trader Joe’s has a great one, as does the Afia brand at Whole Foods) fresh out of the oven. I usually do like 4 of the tiny Afia ones, or 3 of the Trader Joe’s ones which are a bit bigger.
Once they’re nice and hot and crisp, I break them up into maybe 3-4 pieces and dump them over the top of my salad and toss. SO GOOD. It feels so splurgy and not like a salad because of the hot, crispy falafel. Like I said, it’s not the Hummus Tahina exactly. It’s actually a much lower calorie version of that salad. If you wanted you could top the salad with a bit of hummus – but I found this version plenty filling.
Gateway Salad for Kids
I think this is a slightly more approachable salad for the kids. The parmesan topping (if you choose to add it) and creaminess of the dressing are definitely more appealing than the standard olive oil and vinegar dressing. I know a lot of people don’t even try salad with kids – but just throwing this out there! This was one of the first salad dressings I truly liked growing up.
Now, on to the recipe!
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Buttermilk Salad with Chives
Perfect easy spring salad recipe! I love this dressing over butter lettuce – either just the lettuce, or mixed with tomatoes, sliced avocado, pine nuts, and toasted croutons.
The amount of dressing in this recipe will make about 4 large personal salads (each about 4 ounces of leaves – this is how much I personally eat for 1 salad). It keeps for about a week, which means that once I’ve made this dressing, I’m all set with an easy salad option for the week.
- Total Time: 10 minutes
- Yield: 4 servings 1x
Ingredients
Dressing
1 cup buttermilk
3 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons chopped chives
1 cup very finely grated parmesan (I use a micro planer, so this is about 1 ounce of cheese; if the cheese is not very finely grated, reduce to 1/2 cup to keep the cheese content similar)
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1/4 tsp salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salad
16 ounces butter lettuce (or similar, such as little gem or red/green oak leaf lettuce) (about 4 large personal salads)
Optional Toppings
5 cherry tomatoes, halved
1/2 avocado, sliced
1 tablespoon pine nuts
1 slice of crusty bread
finely grated parmesan
Instructions
1. Make the dressing.
In a storage jar/other container, combine the following:
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 3 tablespoons lemon juice (I squeeze my lemons over a strainer to ensure no seeds fall into the mix.)
- 2 tablespoons chopped chives
- 1 cup very finely grated parmesan (about 1 ounce). See image below to see what I mean by “very finely” (I use a microplaner to do this – it results in very finely grated parmesan; if not very finely grated, that’s fine, just reduce the amount of Parm to 1/2 cup.)
- 1 garlic clove, crushed
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
(Very finely = the thin parmesan on top of this salad.)
2. Toss salad with dressing.
I use about 1/4 cup for every 4 ounces of leaves.
3. Add toppings, if using.
- For tomatoes/avocado/pine nuts: Throw them onto the salad and toss again right before you eat.
- For croutons: Toast your slice of crusty bread. While it is still warm, slice it into crouton-sized pieces. Immediately toss with the pre-dressed salad and eat immediately. (You must pre-toss the salad before adding the croutons or they will absorb too much dressing.)
- For parmesan, and a pretty presentation: After the salad is tossed and ready to go, you can grate a little parmesan over the top to make it very pretty. Again, I use a microplaner to do this – it results in very finely grated parmesan that looks prettttttty.
4. Enjoy!
Notes
Missing an ingredient? Here are some substitution options.
- Prep Time: 10 min
- Category: Salad
- Method: No Cook
