Japanese Summer Salad
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.)
Servings: 2 people
Calories: 284kcal
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
You can also add 4 Tablespoons of canned corn and 3 shredded crabsticks, but make sure you increase the salad dressing by half.
Nutrition
Calories: 284kcal | Carbohydrates: 19g | Protein: 7g | Fat: 22g | Saturated Fat: 3g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 2g | Monounsaturated Fat: 15g | Sodium: 1111mg | Potassium: 990mg | Fiber: 4g | Sugar: 11g | Vitamin A: 11257IU | Vitamin C: 63mg | Calcium: 138mg | Iron: 5mg