Asian Green Salad with Soy-Sesame Dressing
Asian Green Salad with Soy-Sesame Dressing and Sesame Seeds is an amazingly flavorful salad idea that tastes great any time of year! Skip the carrots and/or tomatoes if you want fewer carbs, but be sure to make the tasty dressing; it’s good on so many things!
PIN Asian Green Salad with Soy-Sesame Dressing to try it later!
I’m infatuated with salads. Many days I’ll eat a big salad for lunch and then have another small salad as part of my dinner. I like salads of every kind, and that’s why there’s such a huge category for Salad Recipes on this blog.
With all the salad love going on around here, every so often a salad comes along that really knocks my socks off, and for more than a week now I’ve been eating this amazing Asian Green Salad with Soy-Sesame Dressing on repeat!
The salad came from Food to Live By (affiliate link), a great cookbook written by one of the owners of Earthbound Farms, and it’s a recipe she got from the owners of Flying Fish Grill, where it’s one of her favorite things to order. It’s the flavorful shake-in-a-jar dressing that makes this salad.
Romaine lettuce and baby greens are tossed together with the dressing and then topped with slivered carrots, slivered cucumbers, diced tomatoes, and sesame seeds. If you want it to be a lower-carb salad, feel free to use more cucumbers and less carrots and tomatoes. And you can skip the tomatoes completely if they aren’t in season!
That’s all there is to it for this salad, and truthfully when I was making it I was skeptical, especially about the dressing which seemed awfully thin to be a dressing for lettuce. But the ultra-flavorful salad was absolutely devoured by Jake and I the first time we made it, and I think I’ve made it five more times in a week. If you’re a salad lover like I am, I promise this is a salad worth paying attention to.
What ingredients do you need for this Asian Green Salad?
- soy sauce, use Gluten-Free Soy Sauce (affiliate link) if needed
- Unseasoned Rice Vinegar (affiliate link)
- Grapeseed Oil (affiliate link), or other neutral-flavored oil
- sesame oil (affiliate link)
- Monkfruit Sweetener (affiliate link) or sweetener of your choice
- Romaine lettuce
- baby greens
- diced tomato (definitely optional if tomatoes aren’t in season)
- carrots
- cucumber
- toasted Sesame Seeds (affiliate link)
What gives this Asian green salad the Asian flavors?
It’s the Soy-Sesame Dressing with soy sauce, rice vinegar, and sesame seed oil that gives this salad such amazing flavors.
How to Make Asian Green Salad with Soy-Sesame Dressing:
(Scroll down for complete recipe with nutritional information.)
- Combine soy sauce, unseasoned rice vinegar, neutral-flavored oil, sesame oil, and sweetener of your choice in a jar. Put the lid on and shake until everything is dissolved together. Be sure to use Gluten-Free Soy Sauce (affiliate link) if needed.
- If I hadn’t been skeptical about the dressing I might have done a better job on my matchstick cucumbers and carrots!
- I couldn’t resist using a few of my Green Zebra tomatoes which are still hanging on, but small grape tomatoes would be great in this. And if it’s not tomato season I’d just skip the tomatoes!
- Tear apart one heart of Romaine lettuce and wash and dry in a salad spinner (or by hand.)
- Combine the Romaine with about 4 cups of baby greens and toss with enough dressing to coat the lettuce.
- Arrange the dressed lettuce on a plate or in a salad bowl, top with carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, and a generous sprinkling of toasted sesame seeds.
- This Asian Green Salad with Soy-Sesame Dressing will be devoured by anyone who tries it. And this recipe is perfect for Weekend Food Prep; make the dressing and cut lettuce, cucumber and keep them in the fridge to make salads later in the week!
Make it a Low-Carb Meal:
I’d eat a big bowl of this for lunch or serve it as a side salad for dinner with Forbidden City Chicken, Grilled Boneless Pork Chops, Chicken with Peanut Sauce, Korean Salmon with Dipping Sauce or Air Fryer Fish Sticks.
More Green Salad to Try:
- Mediterranean Salad with Purslane and Mint
- Ottolenghi’s Perfect Lettuce Salad
- Peperoncini Chopped Salad with Romaine, Red Bell Pepper, and Feta
- American Greek Salad
- Spinach Salad with Bacon and Feta
Weekend Food Prep:
This recipe has been added to a new category called Weekend Food Prep to help you find recipes you can prep or cook on the weekend and eat during the week!
Asian Green Salad with Soy-Sesame Dressing
Asian Green Salad with Soy-Sesame Dressing is a delicious combination of flavors; the dressing recipe came from Flying Fish Restaurant.
Ingredients
Dressing Ingredients:
- 1/4 cup soy sauce (see notes)
- 1/4 cup unseasoned rice vinegar (see notes)
- 1/4 cup neutral-flavored oil (see notes)
- 1 T sesame seed oil
- 1/4 cup Monkfruit Sweetener, or sweetener of your choice
Salad Ingredients:
- I heart of Romaine lettuce, torn apart, washed, and dried
- 4 cups baby greens
- 1 cup diced tomato
- 1/2 cup matchstick carrots (see notes)
- 1/2 cup matchstick cucumber
- 2 tsp. toasted sesame seeds
Instructions
- Combine the soy sauce, rice vinegar, oil, sesame oil, and sweetener of your choice in a jar with a tight-fitting lid. Put lid on and shake jar until all the ingredients are dissolved.
- Tear apart the Romaine heart, wash, and spin dry or dry with paper towels.
- Dice tomato. Cut carrots and cucumber into matchstick strips until you have about 1/2 cup of each.
- Toast sesame seeds in a dry frying pan for 1-2 minutes, just until they start to smell toasted. (Or buy pre-toasted sesame seeds and you can use them right from the jar.)
- Put the washed Romaine and baby greens into a medium sized bowl and toss with enough dressing to coat all the greens (about 2-3 tablespoons dressing.)
- Arrange the dressed greens on individual salad plates or in bowls.
- Top each salad with some tomato, carrots, and cucumber and sprinkle with sesame seeds.
- Serve immediately.
Notes
Be sure to use Gluten-Free Soy Sauce (affiliate link) if needed.
Be sure not to use seasoned rice vinegar which contains sugar.
Grapeseed Oil (affiliate link) or Peanut Oil (affiliate link) will be good in this salad.
I would use Monkfruit Sweetener (affiliate link) for this recipe.
If you want less carbs, skip the carrots and double the cucumbers.
This recipe was adapted from Flying Fish Salad in Food to Live By (affiliate link).
Nutrition Information:
Yield:
4Serving Size:
1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 179Total Fat: 8gSaturated Fat: 1gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 6gCholesterol: 0mgSodium: 931mgCarbohydrates: 23gFiber: 13gSugar: 6gProtein: 10g
Nutrition information is automatically calculated by the Recipe Plug-In I am using. I am not a nutritionist and cannot guarantee 100% accuracy, since many variables affect those calculations.
Low-Carb Diet / Low-Glycemic Diet / South Beach Diet Suggestions:
As long as you use an approved sweetener in the dressing, this Asian Green Salad is pretty low in carbs and a great choice for any phase of the original South Beach Diet. You may need to omit the carrots for Keto or if you’re eating it for phase one of South Beach.
Find More Recipes Like This One:
Use Salad Recipes for more recipes like this one. Use the Diet Type Index to find recipes suitable for a specific eating plan. You might also like to follow Kalyn’s Kitchen on Pinterest, on Facebook, on Instagram, on TikTok, or on YouTube to see all the good recipes I’m sharing there.
36 Comments on “Asian Green Salad with Soy-Sesame Dressing”
Sue your version sounds great, especially the black sesame seeds. So glad it was a winner for you.
I made this salad dressing yesterday, although I can't remember whether I used sweetener or not! If I did, I just squezed a few drops of a carb-free liquid sweetener (no Splenda in Switzerland). I like that the recipe for this dressing can easily be remembered – this is certainly a plus!
For the salad I just used what I had on hand: iceberg lettuce, red bell pepper, bean sprouts, spring onions and I used black sesame seeds for more contrast.
I served the salad as a side to gingery beef pie and after having a first bite of the salad my boyfriend proclaimed: "This is good!". I guess that means I'll make it again!
Josephine, there is gluten free soy sauce like this one. I am assuming that's what people would have in their fridge if they need it.
uh..soy sauce isn't gluten free
I'm surprised you found it that sweet, as there are equal amounts of soy sauce, vinegar, oil, and sweetener but definitely use less next time. I buy Grapeseed oil at Costco, where it's very reasonable. There are a few other recipes on the blog using it, and more to come!
It took me a few days to get all my ingredients tog. I followed as directed. I really love the salad,and will make again.However I must make this one comment in regards to the amount of sweetener. I used the yellow package stuff,and measured it out to equal the recipe. For me it was way too sweet. The second day I added some additional vinegar to offset that,but it was still too sweet. I marked on the recipe to reduce the sweetness to at least 1/2. Love the concept,and will work at this again. I was shocked at the price of the oil,one store it was $11.plus. Certainly not in my budget, I did find some however for $6. which is still high. Hope Kalyn can help me use this in other dishes.;o)
Margaret, so glad you enjoyed it.
So yummy — cannot count the number of times my hubby said, in many different ways, how delicious it was!
Mimi, glad you liked it. And duh, I think we used low-sodium soy sauce so I will change that in the directions, Thanks!!
Made this last night for dinner. OMGoodness, it is WONDERFUL!!! I used grape tomatoes, cut in half, but otherwise followed the recipe to a tee. The only thing I might do differently next time (and there will be a next and a next and a next…) would be to use 2 T low-sodium soy sauce and 2 T regular soy sauce. It was a tad bit salty and I love salt. Thanks for a great recipe! Oh, and I served it with Pan Seared Scallops with Sesame Sauce. Yummmmm
Yin&Yang and Jeanette, just had it again last night for dinner!
That sounds like a salad I could enjoy everyday too. The ingredients are similar to a salad dressing I used to buy at the Asian grocery store.
The salad looks delicious! More importantly, the ingredients are easy to get and can be put together in matter of minutes. Thank you for sharing this wonderful recipe!
Emily, so glad you like the sound of it. Still eating it here!
Jamie, I try to eat salad every day too and have a lot of dressing ideas really does help. This one is a keeper!
Beautiful! We eat salad every day and changing the flavors always makes it more interesting. We love Asian-inspired and flavored dressings best!
What a recipe! Can't wait to try this one…I looove salads! It's nearing lunch time at work and this one's making me real hungry. Thanks for sharing!