BLT Salad with Homemade Buttermilk Ranch Dressing — A BLT salad packed with an abundance of veggies for added texture and flavor, all topped with homemade ranch! Fast, fresh, healthy & satisfying!
Easy Recipe for BLT Salad
My family adores anything with bacon. Bacon makes everything better, right?
The salad is chock full of colors, textures, and a plethora of veggies.
As many textures, flavors, and veggies that I can pack into a salad, that happier I am.
My favorite are the big tomato slices. Almost daily for the past 10 years, I eat one tomato. You know what they say, a tomato a day keeps the doctor away. Something like that.
Having juicy tomatoes with the crunchy cucumber slices, crisp carrots, and the little bursts of flavor and color from the peas and corn scattered about, is my idea of a great salad.
But what really makes a salad is the dressing. No matter how good the greens and veggies are, the dressing is the make-it-or-break-it element. And this dressing is a definite make-it.
You can just use your favorite store-bought ranch dressing, but making your own takes about 1 minute.
And after trying homemade ranch, you’ll never need those powdered ranch dressing mix packets again. Or shall I say packets of sodium and garlic powder.
BLT Salad Ingredients
To make this easy recipe for BLT salad, you’ll need:
- Bacon
- Salad greens
- Tomatoes
- Cucumber
- Carrots
- Corn
- Peas
- Mayonnaise
- Sour cream
- Buttermilk
- Fresh parsley
- Lemon juice
- Olive oil
- Green onion or chives
- Garlic
How to Make BLT Salad with Ranch Dressing
Making a BLT salad from scratch is so easy! I love that the dressing can be prepared in advance and eaten throughout the week.
Here’s a look at how the salad is prepared:
- Cook the bacon: Cook according to manufacturer’s instructions. Dice small; set aside.
- Assemble the salad: In a large bowl, add the greens, top with tomato, cucumber, carrots, peas, corn, and sprinkle bacon pieces over the top; set aside.
- Make the dressing: Combine the mayo and sour cream with a splash of buttermilk, lemon juice, olive oil, green onions or chives, parsley, salt and pepper, and blend until smooth.
- Drizzle as much dressing as you’d like over the salad. Enjoy!
Can I Use Different Veggies?
Of course! You can customize your BLT salad however you see fit. However, I recommend keeping the salad greens, tomato, and bacon — otherwise you’d be missing one of the key components of a BLT.
Can I Make This Vegetarian?
Yes! That’s what I did. Simply use your favorite vegan bacon and cook according to package instructions.
Tips for the Best BLT Salad
Low-fat swaps: For the dressing, you can use lite/reduced fat versions of the mayo and sour cream (or try Greek yogurt). I did, and the dressing is still plenty creamy, thick, and luscious, with just the right amount of tang from buttermilk.
Adjust the flavors: Like all dressings, adjust the seasonings, salt, and flavor balance to your taste. If you think it needs a dash more lemon, buttermilk, oil, salt, or whatever it is, add it to taste.
Leftover dressing: The recipe makes just over 1 cup dressing and extra will keep easily for a week in the fridge. It’s great to have around to do double duty as a veggie dip, or I’m sure it would make a fabulous chicken marinade.
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BLT Chopped Salad with Homemade Creamy Buttermilk Ranch Dressing
Ingredients
Salad
- ½ cup cooked, diced bacon or faux bacon pieces (about 8 strips bacon, cooked to manufacturer’s instructions)
- about 3 to 4 cups salad greens
- 1 small/medium ripe tomato, sliced into thin rounds
- half of 1 cucumber, about 10 thinly sliced rounds
- ¼ cup thinly sliced carrots
- ¼ cup peas, I used frozen
- ¼ cup corn, I used frozen
Buttermilk Ranch Dressing
- ½ heaping cup mayonnaise, lite or reduced fat okay
- ½ heaping cup sour cream, (lite or reduced fat okay; plain Greek yogurt may be substituted
- ¼ cup buttermilk + extra if necessary to thin
- 2 tablespoons minced fresh flat-leaf, Italian parsley
- 1 to 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1 to 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 to 2 tablespoon minced fresh green onion, scallions, or chives ( I used 1 trimmed green onion in entirety)
- 1 small garlic clove, peeled, optional and to taste
- ½ teaspoon salt, or to taste
- ½ teaspoon ground black pepper, or to taste
Instructions
- Salad – Cook bacon according to manufacturer’s instructions. Dice small; set aside.
- In a large bowl, add the greens, top with tomato, cucumber, carrots, peas, corn, and sprinkle bacon pieces over the top; set aside.
- Buttermilk Ranch Dressing – To the canister of a food processor or blender (mini food processors work great here), add all ingredients and blend until smooth and creamy, about 30 seconds. Taste dressing and if necessary, adjust flavor balance by adding more lemon, oil, herbs, salt and pepper, or whatever dressing needs, to taste. I like my dressing thicker and didn’t use more than 1/4 cup buttermilk, but add more, to taste, to thin it out. Brands of mayo, sour cream, and buttermilk all vary in their thickness.
- Transfer dressing to a glass jar with lid, or airtight container with a lid.
- Drizzle over salad and toss to combine. Serve immediately. Extra dressing will keep for 7 to 10 days airtight in the fridge; shake well before next use.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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omg! i absolutely hate bacon too!!!! yay! haha, a while ago (im not either of these now) when i went paleo and then primal i felt like really WAS the only person in the world who hated bacon! – i literally, CAN.NOT.STAND.IT. !!!
You feel exactly how I do. I mean,I CAN.NOT.STAND.IT.either. I know. We’re a huge minority as you full well know!
LOVE this BLT salad recipe. Sharing everywhere today :)
Thank you for all the shares and pins. You’re awesome :) xo
Okay, bacon aside on this amazing salad, THANK YOU for not putting hard boiled egg on it. OMG, way to ruin a good salad! This one is beautiful and I want it ALL.
I know! And if my family would have had their way, they’d have wanted that too! So I could have stunk up my house with bacon AND eggs…all to eat…plants. Which is all I want anyway :)
I’m in love w/ this salad… it will be shared on my FB page today!
Thanks for sharing, Lori! I appreciate it! :)
So many pretty colors! Those tomatoes are making me wish it was summer. Thanks for sharing!
These photos are gorgeous, Averie! I need to make more veggie filled recipes, just because I love the bright colors in the pictures. Haha! Also, that dressing looks amazing!
Thanks for the pic compliments, Karly! :)
What a fresh and colorful salad! Love love love all the bright veggies and that buttermilk ranch dressing looks incredible. So want this for lunch now! pinned! :D
Thanks for pinning!
Actually, while I do enjoy bacon every now and again (especially if its just used as a component), I’m not nearly as obsessed as most people are. Sometimes I think it’s just too much? You know? Can overpower everything else. I think I’m going to get hate mail for that statement, haha.
This salad is so vibrant and beautiful, Averie!!!
You won’t get any hate mail from me :)
I LOVE bacon. This salad looks awesome Averie, all the way to the dressing YUM!!
thank you, Aimee!
Oooh that homemade dressing looks incredible! And I can’t believe you don’t like bacon. I think bacon is what keeps me from being a vegetarian. :)
I loathe it :) Funny, the only thing that keeps me from being vegan is a stick of butter and an egg for cookie baking. If I could find a way to duplicate results, I’d be vegan 100%. For me, it comes down to cookie-baking. And for you, it comes down to bacon LOL
I love veggie-packed salads like these! I could probably eat a different one everyday. And I totally understand your love of tomatoes; I eat them whole (like an apple) and have been since I was 10 years old.
I do slice mine but I had a friend who ate them like that when I was growing up!
My family is on team bacon, too. But it does stink the house up! A thing I’d happily take on for a bowl of this beautiful salad :)
I don’t like bacon either. It makes me sad.
I will, however, cook it and serve it to other people, because it makes other people happy. I guess there’s an element of hypocrisy in that.
On the other hand, I know for a fact that this buttermilk ranch will also make this person insanely happy. Maybe I need to change my approach.
Another beautiful and very colorful salad!!! I have been wanting to make a batch of homemade mayo and would love to use it in this dressing. I have turkey bacon in the freezer and might try cooking it in the oven to see if there is a little less “after smell”. Jon will like this too (gotta love a man who’s happy with a hearty salad as a meal)!
Yes you do have to love that kinda guy! And I think the fake bacon smells just as bad! Turkey, soy, etc. It all has that bacon permeation smell. That just…lingers forever! :)
I’m checking out all the vegetables in this salad and they are all pretty reasonable for me to get right now in the winter season. I think that I will try this combination for dinner or our lunches very soon. I love bacon… my nemesis is fish. It is so hard for me to have the smell in the house.
Oh god that’s another one that STINKS forever! I don’t mind cooking it for my family but omg the stench after-the-fact that lingers just isn’t worth it! I hear ya!
Now that is an amazing looking salad and that chipolata orange chicken sounds off the chain delicious! Bookmarked and pinned :)