Pesto Balsamic Vinaigrette – Easy Homemade Dressing

This pesto balsamic vinaigrette combines basil pesto, balsamic vinegar, citrus and a touch of maple syrup for a delicious balance of sweet, tangy and savory flavors. It’s wonderful on salads, especially Caprese salad, and we particularly enjoy it drizzled over fresh tomato slices with a little salt. The basil pesto and fish sauce give the dressing a rich, savory depth.

This recipe is naturally gluten free.

Watch A Video

Here is a video of 2 Cooks in the Kitchen making Pesto Vinaigrette:

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 Tbls Basil Pesto
• 1 Tbls Lemon Pesto (Google for recipe – delicious!)
• 1 1/2 Tbls Balsamic Vinegar
• 1 Tbls Fish Sauce
• 1 Tbls Maple Syrup
• 1 Tbls Orange Juice
• 1/4 Cup Peanut Oil

Pesto

We start this recipe with the pesto. We’re using two kinds of pesto for this recipe; basil pesto and lemon pesto. You can find our basil pesto recipe here and you can google lemon pesto for a recipe until we manage to create one on our site. We’ll put the two kinds of pesto into a half pint jar. We originally made this recipe with one tablespoon of every ingredient except oil and then adjusted to use 1 1/2 tablespoons of the basil pesto.

Balsamic Vinegar

The other ingredient we increased from our one tablespoon ratio is the balsamic vinegar. 1 1/2 tablespoons lets the flavor cut through better. We like to use a good quality balsamic for dressings.

Fish Sauce

We add fish sauce to many recipes as sort of a mystery ingredient. The extra umami really helps pull this together. We’ll look for the best first press fish sauce we can find, in this case it’s Red Boat fish sauce we found on Amazon.

Maple Syrup and Orange Juice

Our last two one tablespoon ingredients are maple syrup and orange juice. The extra sweetness from the maple syrup and the fruitiness of the orange juice really round out ther flavor of this vinaigrette.

Oil

The last thing we need to add is our oil. We like the flavor of peanut oil but you can use any oil you prefer. 1/4 cup will almost fill our half pint jar and then we can shake to mix it.

Shake Thoroughly

We’ll need to shake this thoroughly to mix it. We really want the pesto to break up and diffuse throughout our vinaigrette. Now it is ready to use. Store any leftover in the jar and shake well before using. We keep a jar of this vinaigrette on the counter at all times because there are just so many uses for it.

In the summer we will slice some tomatoes from our greenhouse and eat them with a little salt and our pesto vinaigrette.

Pesto Vinaigrette is a great dressing for Caprese Salad!

Our Basil Pesto Recipe

Explore our collection of gluten free salads.