Why Avocado Oil Is The Best Dressing For Your Vegan Salad

You’ll be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t like avocados. Creamy, fatty, silky and subtle in flavour, it’s safe to say they have got us all obsessed. 

The humble avocado is of course delicious eaten in its fleshy form, but another way to enjoy its taste and goodness is by using avocado oil for dressing your salads.

Avocado oil is a brilliant oil for a whole host of reasons. It is very adaptable to whatever flavour palette your meal belongs to, offering a luxurious nuttiness to a whole spectrum of types of food. Mexican, South East Asian, Spanish; avocado oil can really do it all. 

Alongside its adaptability, avocado oil is a healthy choice of fat to use in your cooking. We will explore the benefits of avocado oil for the heart, the eyes, how it aids the absorption of vitamins and minerals into the body and many other amazing health advantages.

Avocado Oil Salad Dressing

Instinctively, you may reach for the olive oil when you’re in the process of making a vegan salad dressing. 

Don’t get us wrong, we are big fans of olive oil as you’ll see by our big range of olive oils at PlantX. It’s just that sometimes we want to mix it up and give the underdog the limelight for a bit. 

In this case, it’s avocado oil that is stealing the show. Next time you go to make a salad dressing, try using avocado oil instead and you may be surprised by how delicious the results are.

We’ve put together some simple ideas for delicious salad dressings with avocado oil.

1. Pure avocado oil 

It may seem obvious, but just a drizzle of avocado oil on its own can be all that you need for the right salad. As long as the quality of the oil is high, you will be able to focus on the subtle notes of the oil and how it complements your vegetables. Add a little salt and pepper and you’re good to go!

2. Vegan ‘honey’ and mustard 

A twist on an absolute classic, mix a dash of a vegan honey substitute and mustard with your avocado oil and season generously. 

The sharpness of the mustard, sweetness of the vegan honey and fattiness of the avocado oil blend together to create one tasty vegan salad dressing. 

Try using our Clearspring avocado oil, Meridian date syrup and Biona organic dijon mustard as a winning combination. A squeeze of lemon wouldn’t go amiss too!

3. Hot and spicy

For the hot-headed vegans out there, you might want to try avocado oil with a splash of vegan hot sauce to spice things up. 

The heat of the chillies is neutralised slightly by the cooling avocado oil. Eaten Alive do an absolute corker of a vegan hot sauce: the smoked sriracha fermented hot sauce which would be paired beautifully with avocado oil. 

Why Is Avocado Oil So Good For You?

A healthy heart

Virgin avocado oil contains high levels of something called monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs): in short, healthy fats. Examples of where MUFAs are found include olive, canola and peanut oils. 

This kind of fat is far better for our hearts than saturated fats that we might find in things like butter or ghee, which can raise the level of cholesterol in your blood. 

There are plenty of studies that show the benefits of avocado oil for your health. This study purports that virgin avocado oil can even potentially be used for the management of chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and fatty liver disease. 

Healthy eyes

Lutein is an antioxidant that is found naturally in your eyes. Research shows that a Lutein-rich diet is intrinsically important for eye health and can help to slow the process of macular degeneration that tends to come with age. Guess what’s a good source of Lutein… you got it, avocados! 

Seeking out foods that contain Lutein in your diet is a great way of preserving the health of your eyes, and it also has been found to protect your eyes from light damage. This study explores the role Lutein plays in protecting the eyes by filtering high energy wavelengths.

Absorption of minerals and vitamins

As well as helping to keep your heart and eyes healthy, avocado oil is also beneficial because it can help your body to absorb important nutrients and vitamins.

Research demonstrates that many fruits and vegetables need the aid of fats for the body to process their healthy goodness properly. 

We know that it's rare for fruits and vegetables to be high in fats, so using avocado oil for dressing on your vegan salads is the best way for you to properly absorb all of the good stuff. 

Just to drum it home, not only is avocado oil delicious and healthy in its own right, it actually enhances the healthiness of the other fruits and vegetables you’re eating with it.

What more reason could you need to start using avocado oil for salad dressing! 

Helping with the symptoms of arthritis

Extensive research has been conducted on the benefits of avocado oil for sufferers of arthritis (a common condition that causes painful joints), specifically focusing on osteoarthritis which involves the breakdown of cartilage in the joints.

The research concludes that avocado and soybean oil contain compounds that help to relieve the pain and stiffness of the joints for sufferers of osteoarthritis. 

Improving psoriasis

Avocado oil has also been linked to an improvement in the symptoms of psoriasis. Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin disease that is relatively common and can cause red itchy patches on the skin.

Vitamins A and E are found in high quantities in avocado oil. These vitamins are associated with good skin health, which is why they were found to help with the symptoms of psoriasis. 

One study found that a cream containing avocado oil has the potential to be used as a long-term treatment for psoriasis. 

And That’s a Wrap

In essence, avocado oil is a wonder food that does some pretty magical things. We’ve seen that avocado oil can be used as a dressing alternative to olive oil: paired with vegan honey and mustard, hot sauce or simply salt and pepper if you want to keep things simple. 

Overwhelming scientific evidence shows the health benefits of avocado oil for our hearts, eyes and general bodily health by helping us to absorb all the vitamins and minerals we can from our food. 

Just remember, if you make a delicious salad packed with vegan vegetable and fruit delights, drizzling some high-quality avocado oil like our Clearspring bottle on top will actually boost your body’s ability to soak up all the goodness! It truly is amazing stuff.

On top of all this, avocado oil is simply delicious. Rather delicate and subtle with a warm nuttiness to it, avocado oil makes for a stunning addition to any salad. Coating your vegetables with its fatty goodness, who can deny that avocado oil deserved its time in the limelight.

These are just a few of the reasons why you should explore the wonders of avocado oil salad dressing!