Make Your Own Honey Mustard Dressing With 4 Easy Ingredients

Once you start making your own dressing at home, you'll never be able to look at the store-bought version the same way ever again. There's really no comparison when it comes to freshness, flavor, price, and nutritional value. For those who don't consider themselves cooks, it may sound intimidating to make dressing from scratch, but it's actually incredibly easy, and you often have the needed ingredients in your pantry already (if not, most grocery stores carry what's required for a basic vinaigrette).

If you're looking to level up the tangy sweetness in your salad dressing game, consider making your own honey mustard dressing. You'll only need lemon, mayonnaise or olive oil, honey, and mustard to get started. Hot tip: If you don't have lemon at home, you can use apple cider vinegar instead. When it comes to finding the perfect balance of these four ingredients, our favorite is the "try and taste" method. All you have to do is try a certain ratio, then taste it, and if you feel the dressing needs more sweetness add more honey. If it needs more acid, try more lemon. 

A good starting ratio is mixing together ¼ cup of mayonnaise to give your dressing a creamy base, 1 tablespoon of your preferred mustard, 1 tablespoon of honey, and ½ tablespoon of lemon juice, and going from there. Some people prefer to season their dressing with salt and pepper — this is where the "try and taste" method really shines. 

The beautiful thing about honey mustard dressing is that you can use it for more than just dressing up a salad. Fast food restaurant aficionados might even recognize honey mustard as a dipping sauce before they think of it as a salad dressing. Consider adding homemade honey mustard dressing to your next potato salad or drizzling some on a burger. It's also excellent on sandwiches and makes for a delicious lox glaze. If, after all this, you'd still rather buy the pre-made stuff from the store, we have you covered as we ranked the best honey mustards in the grocery store.