Thug Kitchen Vegan Caesar Dressing

Caesar salad is definitely my go-to salad if I'm out for a light lunch. I love it with some grilled chicken, and its only good if its put together the traditional way- I've seen it served with whole lettuce leaves and slices of sourdough bread. NO.


The lettuce needs to be chopped, it needs crisp squares of bacon and proper croutons. The egg can be coddled, poached or boiled, but if it has a hard yolk I like it added at the end as a garnish and not mixed through because that chalky yolk through my salad does nothing for me. As you can see I'm quite particular about my caesars and to be honest I was a little apprehensive when I embarked on this journey of making a vegan caesar dressing.

The Thug Kitchen Cookbook is vegan so the recipe is basically just lettuce and croutons with this dressing, and while I went to the effort of making the vegan dressing my husband wasn't going to be content with a bowl of lettuce and toasted bread so I did the boiled eggs, parmesan, bacon and grilled chicken with it. It was divine! Don't be fooled- this dressing is really great and isn't limited to caesars, you can have it as an added nutritional boost to any salad.

Ok so enough yammering, here is the recipe;

You will need... (makes plenty!)
1 cup of raw/natural almonds, chopped roughly
1 cup hot tap water
juice of 1 small lemon
1 tsp of rice wine vinegar
2 garlic cloves, chopped
2 Tbs dijon mustard
1/2 cup olive oil
a little bit of salt
the recipe calls for capers but they're optional- I didn't use them because I didn't have them on hand but you could add them if you like, just add them before seasoning because they are salty.

Method...
1. Soak the chopped almonds in the hot water for 20 minutes.
2. Add the almonds to the blender and process until smooth, add the remaining ingredients, blitz until its nice and creamy like a caesar dressing. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary.
3. Use what you need on your salad and store the rest in an airtight container in the fridge for future use, it will firm up in the fridge so to soften it place what you need in the microwave for 5 seconds to take the chill off it before using or just add a splash of water.
My almonds still had their skins on- hence the speckled look. Still delicious

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