This easy Japanese Summer Salad is a light and refreshing dish with the best delicious dressing sauce made from onions (玉ねぎドレッシング.) It can be made vegetarian or bulked up with crab sticks- I love the tangy, savory, and umamilicious sauce so much, we have this Asian salad dressing for dinner every week! It goes well with spinach, carrot, cucumbers, tomatoes, and more. (No Ginger, Garlic, Peanut, or Sesame.)
Jump to:
🥘 Ingredients
You will need a few simple ingredients for this popular summer side dish:
- Salad Leaves: I usually use Baby Spinach leaves. A handful of arugula rocket leaves can add a touch of flavor but don't worry if you don't have them.
- Cherry tomatoes: halve or quarter them before adding to the salad.
- Canned Corn, Carrots, Cucumbers , optional: The Baby Spinach and cherry tomatoes are the main ingredients in the salad. However, you can substitute some of them with other ingredients
- Crab stick, optional: When I don't want a vegan dish, I add some shredded seafood sticks.
For the Japanese-style onion sauce:
- onion: you'll need to grate part of the onion to get onion juice then mince the remaining bit. I usually use a yellow onion but you can use red onion for extra sweetness.
- extra virgin olive oil
- white rice vinegar: in Japan, they usually use Japanese kurozu (black vinegar) but as that's harder to get, I use white rice vinegar instead.
- light soy sauce: don't use sweet soy sauce or dark soy sauce.
- white sugar: don't use brown sugar. If you want to use honey instead, make sure it's a neutral one. I don't recommend maple syrup.
🔪 Step-by-Step Instructions
- Ideally 4 hours before you want to make your salad, make the dressing:
Cut your onion into 2 halves. Grate the first halve, making sure you keep all the onion juice. (See photo 1.)
2. Mince the second halve as finely as possible. (See photo 2 for how fine to mince.)
3. Photo 3- the grated onion, minced onion and juice. As you can see, you don't get much onion water, so it's very precious!
4a. Add the grated onion, all the onion juice, minced onion, sugar, light soy sauce, olive oil and white rice vinegar to an airtight container. Shake well till all the sugar has dissolved into the sauce.
Note: if you don't have a container, use your fork or chopsticks to mix it in a big bowl.
4b. Refrigerate.
4c. 4 hours later, remove the sauce from the fridge and toss with the spinach and cucumbers (or vegetables of choice.)
🥡 How to Store
Store leftovers in an airtight container for 1-2 days.
I usually mix the salad together and store everything in 1 box- you don't need to separate the leaves and Japanese salad dressing sauce.
Meal prep: You can prepare the sauce the day in advance and refrigerate it. Like Japanese curry, the flavors develop better overnight.
🥗 Suggested Accompanying Recipes
Enjoyed this easy Asian summer salad dressing Recipe? Please leave a 5-star 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟rating in the recipe card below! If you REALLY liked this dish, please consider supporting it by buying me a bottle of soy sauce! 🙂 (No obligation though!) Thank you and have a great day!
Japanese Summer Salad
Equipment
- 1 Grater
- 1 Knife and cutting board
- 1 Airtight container
Ingredients
- 0.5 lb Baby Spinach leaves 225g, washed and dried
- 15 cherry tomatoes halved or quartered
- A few Arugula Leaves Optional but recommended for the zing, washed and dried
Japanese Salad Dressing
- ½ onion, grated, minced Keep all the precious onion juice. I recommend a red onion for sweetness but sometmes use yellow onions if that's what we have in the pantry.
- 3-4 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil I usually use 4 Tablespoons of olive oil, but it can feel a tad oily, so you can also reduce to 3 or 3.5 Tablespoons.
- 3 Tablespoons rice vinegar
- 2 Tablespoons light soy sauce
- 3-4 teaspoons white sugar don't use brown sugar
Instructions
Onion Salad Dressing
- Ideally 4 hours before you want to make your salad, make the dressing: Cut your onion into 2 halves. Keep ½ for other recipes.
- Halve the remaining onion (so you get 2 quarters- Grate the first quarter, making sure you keep all the onion juice. Mince the second quarter as finely as possible.
- Add the grated onion, all the onion juice, minced onion, sugar, light soy sauce, olive oil and white rice vinegar to an airtight container. Shake well till all the sugar has dissolved into the sauce. (If you make a bigger batch, you can whisk it, but this is too little. If you don't have an airtight container, mix the ingredients with a fork.)
- Refrigerate for the flavors to meld.
Make the Salad
- 4 hours later, remove the sauce from the fridge and toss with the spinach and tomatoes (or vegetables of choice.) Serve with teriyaki chicken etc.
Notes
Note: the nutritional information is an estimate automatically calculated using the WPRM recipe maker and I am not responsible for its veracity.
Nutrition
If this Japanese summer recipe with onion sauce was helpful, maybe you'd like to sign up for my newsletter in which I send you more tips and tricks to make authentic Asian food?
CC says
Was so light but tasty, we make this quite often now, thanks!
Zen says
So glad you liked the Japanese salad CC! Perfect for summer!