10-Minute Pear Vinaigrette for a Fall Harvest Salad

This is one of my favorite fall dressings! A 10-minute pear vinaigrette to add a deeper fruity flavor to fall harvest salads that's easy and quick to make. And it only needs 3 ingredients in addition to salt, pepper and olive oil.

Use this pear salad dressing also on roasted butternut squash, and other winter squash, as well as roasted beets or carrots.

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A small bottle of homemade pear vinaigrette, with a green salad in the background.

Want to make this recipe perfectly the first time? I want to help with that. So, check out this Table of Contents to see which sections of this post will help you the most.

Jump to:

👗 The Importance of the Right Dressing
🤷‍♀️ What are the main ingredients of vinaigrette?
❤️ Why you'll love this recipe
🧅 Ingredient Notes
💡Ideas for Possible Variations
🍽 Ways to Use This Pear Vinaigrette
FAQ
10-Minute Pear Vinaigrette for a Fall Harvest Salad
Ingredient Notes

I say you can have all the makings for a James Beard award-winning salad, but if you dress it with a mediocre dressing you threw together at the last minute, the salad will quickly become forgettable at best, and jarring at worst.

For example, I recently had a lentil salad at a restaurant down the mountain in Reno that could have been amazing. But it missed the mark thanks to a tart lemon dressing that overwhelmed the flavors of the salad. It needed the rounded depth of sherry vinegar instead of lemon juice.

This faulty pairing of a vinaigrette made the salad unforgettable for all the wrong reasons.

And really, that was just a crazy mistake.

👗 The Importance of the Right Dressing

It's important to consider the salad you're dressing to make sure the dressing will elevate the salad or at the very least complement it. You don't want to see it on someone's blog as an example of a bad dressing pairing. LOL.

For example, I wouldn't use this Thai Peanut Butter Dressing on a salad featuring baby greens. It's too heavy and would drown those fragile greens. But it's perfect on a hardy kale salad, especially when you add apples to the salad.

Conversely, this Lemon Vinaigrette from my cookbook marries well with lots of salads, including tender greens, but might get lost in one with a lot of mustard greens.

🤷‍♀️ What are the main ingredients of vinaigrette?

At its simplest, a vinaigrette is any dressing or marinade that combines a salad oil and any of a range of vinegars or lemon juice as its two major components. This type of dressing may include garlic, shallots, spices, and herbs, but a vinaigrette is really about an emulsion of oil and vinegar.

The oil used is typically a neutral oil such as safflower oil, avocado oil, or olive oil, but can also use a nut oil, such as hazelnut oil.

❤️ Why you'll love this recipe

Elevates fall salads. This pear salad dressing transports fall salads into star territory, especially if they feature fall and winter vegetables such as butternut squash and beets.
Best of all worlds dressing. There's enough heft to the vinaigrette to hold up to hardy greens, such as kale, chicory and radicchio, but gentle enough for a more tender lettuce.
Quick. Pears are soft, and easily pureed, making this pear vinaigrette ready in 10 minutes.
Lasts. It keeps in the refrigerator in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks at least. I've even kept it for 3 weeks with success.
Many uses. Use it as a marinade. I marinate my husband's pork chops in it, but also coat squash and cauliflower with it before roasting.

🧅 Ingredient Notes

Pear - Bartlett pears, Bosc pears and Anjou pears all work great. But make sure the pear is ripe since the recipe calls for it to be puréed. Choose a pear that's unbruised, undamaged, and is firm but easily presses in around its stem. A squishy, over-ripe pear will not provide a bright pear flavor in this vinaigrette recipe.
Pear vinegar - If you can't find pear vinegar, use champagne vinegar, white wine vinegar, or white balsamic vinegar.
Extra Virgin Olive oil - Other neutral salad oil such as avocado oil or grape seed oil work well in this dressing.

💡Ideas for Possible Variations

Add minced garlic and / or fresh thyme leaves.

🍽 Ways to Use This Pear Vinaigrette

Drizzle onto salads with that feature sliced pears, apples, pomegranate seeds, persimmon slices, and candied walnuts.
Liberally baste butternut squash or delicata squash halves before roasting.
Roast up some beets and dress them with this vinaigrette. For example, this Smashed Beet recipe with Goat Cheese Dressing could be easily switched up. Just add goat cheese to the vinaigrette in the mini-chopper, and drizzle it over the beets.

FAQ

What other flavors pair well with the pears in this vinaigrette?

In addition to salad fixings mentioned in the above section, blue cheese, brie, pecorino, goat cheese, and figs are all great additions to salads you dress with this pear vinaigrette.

Honey is a perfect sweetener if you want a sweeter pear dressing.

My favorite greens to use with this vinaigrette are Belgian endive, curly endive (frisee lettuce), watercress, and Boston lettuce. Add some fresh herbs to the salad, such as mint, basil, tarragon, thyme, and flat-leaf parsley.

What's the best way to store this dressing?

Store in an airtight container, such as a jar, for up to 2 weeks in the refrigerator. It may last longer.

My vinaigrette separated. What should I do?

This is one of the most common problems when whisking together a vinaigrette. I use a small blender to make this dressing since the pear needs to be pureed.

However, if you need to whisk the dressing by hand, I recommend whisking together all of the ingredients except the oil. Adding a little mustard greatly aids the emulsification process. Once everything is well combined, gradually whisk in the oil you're using.

Make this Pear Vinaigrette in 10 minutes with just one pear, pear vinegar (or apple cider vinegar), mustard, and a good olive oil. It will make your salad shine!

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