If you like salads but get tired of using the same old dressing, I’ve gathered together 22+ healthy homemade salad dressing recipes for you to try. Plus more about Panera Bread’s journey to serve clean food. (Thank you to Panera Bread for sponsoring this post!)
Okay, I know that you know that I big fluffy heart Panera Bread. It’s no secret. After all, I talk extensively about it in THIS post. What’s not to love? When I walk in to their cafe, I feel happy. It’s clean, smells good, yummy bakery items are calling my name, and their menu speaks to me.
Who wouldn’t go crazy for a menu full of hearty, delicious, “clean” food? If you haven’t already heard, Panera is on a journey to serve clean food. If you’re unfamiliar with the term “clean food”, in a nutshell it means food does not have artificial colors, sweeteners, flavors and preservatives. Panera is ahead of the game and has already started eliminating those things from their menus! They’ve committed to removing all by the end of 2016!
As a firm believer in eating healthy and clean as much as possible, this makes me very excited. Panera wants to be an ally for wellness for the millions of guests they serve each week. They recently launched new branding and tagline: “Panera Bread. Food as it should be.” Yup. 🙂
You know what? They’ve removed artificial colors, sweeteners, flavors and preservatives from the cafe salad dressings they serve, too. I love that because I think their dressings are better than ever now!
Speaking of salads and dressings, I had the pleasure of eating at Panera again last evening. This time I brought my hubby for date night. Last time I went, I had the Mediterranean Chicken & Quinoa Salad so this time I wanted to try something different. I ordered the Power Kale Caesar Salad with Chicken and my husband got the Strawberry Poppyseed & Chicken Salad.
I’m not sure which I liked more! I loved the kale mixed into the caesar. It was very hearty and had these yummy round crouton things mixed in. I absolutely loved the classic caesar dressing, too. The best part about both salads (my husband agrees) is the chicken. It’s thinly sliced and really tender. I would love to get my hands on the recipe they use!
The Strawberry Poppyseed & Chicken Salad was not what I was expecting. It was full of strawberries, pineapple, mandarin oranges and blueberries over greens and tossed in a sweet dressing. Needless to say, my husband and I ended up switching salads because I liked his so much! I love fruit in green salads and sweet dressings. I like to eat colorfully — not just greens, but yellows, reds and blues too. The brighter the better!
Both salads were incredible. I can’t wait to try the Fuji Apple Chicken Salad, BBQ Chicken Salad and the Thai Chicken Salad. Those are next on my list. 🙂
Check out all of Panera’s salads HERE along with all of their nutritional stats too. Did you know you can order online? It makes life so much easier!
Now that I’ve got you thinking about salads, how about I give you 22+ healthy homemade salad dressing recipes to add to your summer salads?
These recipes are from myself and some of my favorite blog friends. Please pin the image above or click on the photo to take you to the site and pin directly from there. Thank you!
We always make our own salad dressing! It’s so easy and so much better tasting, not to mention the fact that you actually know what it is going into it vs looking at an ingredient list and seeing all sorts of names you can’t pronounce and have no idea what they are! I’m excited to have all these new recipes!
I’m also excited to hear that about Panera, because it is one of my favorites. I am addicted to the Thai chicken salad! I almost always get the same thing. I know I should try other stuff, but I just love that salad so much, I can’t do it. 🙂
Jen–I LOVE Panera too–it is nice to have a place I can eat clean while I am out and about. And their salads are AMAZING–so excited to try out these dressings!
I love making my own dressings! This is a great list for pretty much every taste!
Panera has some great salads, it’s always what I end up ordering when I go. I love all of these homemade salad dressing, can’t wait to try some of them out!
Jen, I’m loving you for these healthy homemade salad dressings round-up. I can *never* find a store bought dressing that I like and I run out of ideas of what to make at home. I’m so pinning this, because if anyone needs dressing ideas, it’s me – so thank you my sistah!
Panera is just the best! Wish we had one nearby here. I am always getting in salad ruts, so this is great for me!