Easy Honey Mustard Vinaigrette (with a Kick)

This easy honey mustard vinaigrette is made with kitchen staples and cream style horseradish for a zippy kick. Ditch store-bought honey mustard salad dressing with this flavorful recipe!

I keep things real around here, so I’ll tell you exactly why this post is coming to you a little later than usual: my husband found the cords to his old Nintendo 64 and we’ve been spending our after-work hours battling it out in Mario Kart and Diddy Kong Racing.

HELLO, nostalgia!

It’s amazing how much you remember of the little game quirks and all the shortcuts. Muscle memory with the controller and all. Though I do have to say, I never remembered the games nearly as pixel-y as they look now. We used to watch TV like that?? 😂

With all this gaming infringing on our dinner prep time (said in jest because this is our only gaming console), quick, flavorful recipes have been a big time focus lately.

One of my very favorite lazy girl dinners is to throw leftover protein or simple baked chicken over a big salad. Using a variety of salad dressings (between meals, not all at once!!) keeps things exciting and can take the same ‘ol meal into many different cuisine directions.

Lately sweet onion poppy seed salad dressing has been making an appearance more often than not, but it’s always good to switch things up, right? Right.

This honey mustard vinaigrette recipe is based on one of my mom’s homemade concoctions. I deem her the queen of homemade salad dressings and I always come back a new salad dressing idea or two when we visit.

Ingredients

Using a thick and creamy honey mustard dressing as a dip for baked coconut chicken tenders, fries, or veggies totally works, but I’m partial to vinaigrettes on my salad. This honey mustard vinaigrette has four equal parts:

1. Thick and bold stone ground mustard
2. Honey
3. Extra-virgin olive oil, and
4. Rice vinegar

Honey and mustard for the ‘honey mustard’ part of it and rice vinegar and olive oil for the ‘vinaigrette’. Rice vinegar has a nice punch that adds to the ‘kick’ alluded to in the title, but you can also use apple cider, white wine, or even champagne vinegar if you like.

As for the rest of the kick….horseradish!

I know I just posted sheet pan salmon and potatoes that uses cream style horseradish, but I couldn’t wait to share this honey mustard vinaigrette. I’ve used up to one teaspoon, but there’s wiggle room here to add less or even more. The horseradish is the main ingredient that gives this dressing a kick, so definitely customize it to fit your tastes.

Instructions

Add all ingredients to a jar with a lid and shake, shake, shake. Easy breezy.

While I used a regular mason jar for the batch of dressing pictured here, my first choice salad dressing vessel is this large oxo salad dressing shaker bottle (affiliate link). My mom gave me one and it works like a charm.

I like that it has the measurements right on there (including the third cup lines) so you don’t have to dirty more measuring cups. Plus the dressing can be stored right in it and easily shaken back up to use as the days go by.

Recipe notes

• If you don’t have rice vinegar, you can also use apple cider vinegar, champagne vinegar, white wine vinegar.
• If you’re not a fan of horseradish you can leave it out! You just won’t have as much of a ‘kick’. 🙂