Thai Salad Dressing | The Modern Proper (2024)

June 11, 2024

Peanut butter makes a creamy base for this deeply flavorful Thai salad dressing. With tangy lime juice, fish sauce and a pinch of brown sugar, this Asian vinaigrette will please every palate.

The Best, Simple Creamy Thai Salad Dressing that’s Ready in Minutes.

Make that ready in seconds, especially if you mix this creamy Thai salad dressing in a blender! With both lime juice and white vinegar, this peanutty Thai dressing can be used almost anywhere you’d use a regular, classic vinaigrette but want to add a little Asian-influence. Mix up a batch, pop it in the fridge, and liven up your meals for at least a few days! We love to drizzle this savory-sweet, Thai salad dressing over a simple green salad, or toss it with noodles and julienned peppers for a delicious cold Thai noodle salad.

A Few Ingredients

A lot of Thai salad dressing recipes call for ginger or garlic, but we’ve opted to keep this Asian salad dressing recipe simple simple simple. The only work your knife will do is to slice a lime or two in half, and with no chunky pieces to blend, you can put this dressing together without even dirtying your blender or food processor. Our Thai salad dressing recipe is made up of:

• Tamari. Or, it’s also OK to use soy sauce or coconut aminos!
• Peanut butter. Natural, creamy. Look for one with an ingredient list of just peanuts, or peanuts and salt. No sugar or palm oil, please!
• Fish sauce. More on that in a sec.
• Light olive oil, or other neutral-tasting oil. Something that gives the dressing viscosity, without altering the flavor.
• Fresh lime juice. For a quarter cup, you’ll need 2-3 small limes.
• White vinegar. Oh yes, this is a tangy Thai dressing!
• Brown sugar. Optional, but awesome.

Thai Dressing Ingredient Spotlight: What the Heck is Fish Sauce, Anyway?

Don’t fear the fish sauce! It may be a new-to-you ingredient, but it’ll quickly become a favorite. Fish sauce is a key ingredient in Thai cuisine and if you have in a Thai restaurant, chances are you’ve eaten fish sauce (hello, Pad Thai!). Made from salted, fermented fish, fish sauce may not sound like the most appetizing thing ever. But, just a drop or two delivers a super umami burst of flavor and can really transform dishes and dressings (like this Thai salad dressing). It might just be the ultimate “under-promise, over-deliver”-er of the condiment world. There are tons of brands to choose from, especially if you make a trip to your local Asian grocery store, but we are partial to this one.

A Quick Whisk.

Thai peanut dressing is as easy as 1, 2...well, actually that’s it. Just two steps to peanut salad dressing perfection!

1. Gather and measure your ingredients.
2. Make the Thai dressing by whisking everything together in a bowl until a lovely, creamy emulsion is formed. Or you can mix it in a blender, or a food processor, or even using an immersion blender. Using an electric kitchen tool is faster, but whisking makes (in our opinion) less-annoying dishes.

Thai Peanut Salad Dressing—a Gateway Dressing.

Now that you’re all jazzed about making salad dressing at home, here are a few other super tasty salad dressing recipes to try:

• Homemade Ranch Dressing.
• There’s a really really good Blue Cheese Dressing recipe hiding in this (also really good) Grilled Steak Salad recipe.
• Honey-Mustard Dressing.

Tools You’ll Need:

As you might imagine, this Thai dressing recipe doesn’t require much in the way of tools. You can make it with:

• A blender. OR
• An immersion blender. OR
• A whisk and a bowl and some elbow grease.
• Totally not necessary but so nice to have: a citrus juicer. (great for homemade margaritas, too. FYI)

Have Thai Peanut Dressing, Will Travel.

Or at least will post on instagram. Whether you’re whipping up this Thai salad dressing recipe for an Asian-inspired salad just for the fam, or as part of a more celebratory meal, snap a photo of how you serve it, and maybe even a video of the beautiful people you feed it to. Tag us on Instagram using @themodernproper and #themodernproper. Happy eating!