If you love Big Macs but want something lighter and much healthier, you will love this cheeseburger salad recipe with homemade Big Mac dressing!

I thought my cheeseburger recipe obsession could be just…I don’t know, burgers? But now, it’s starting to creep into other areas of my food life–even the most unsuspecting of places–like salad.

Somehow the concept of a bunless burger wasn’t enough. I had to go and brown the ground beef in a pan, along with onions and garlic, just so I could be sure I’d have a bite of burger in every bite of…salad. Is this the point when I should enter therapy?

It’s likely too late for me.

Cheeseburger Salad with Big Mac Dressing

Now that I’ve made a full-blown cheeseburger salad with BIG MAC DRESSING, I can’t very well turn back. I can’t go back to the days of plopping a burger on a bed of lettuce with just any ol’ dressing when I know how wickedly good and hearty this salad is. It’s a bite of beef in every single forkful, with flavors of garlic and onion cooked right in, and a drizzle of that sweet-meets-tangy Russian dressing that we know as Big Mac sauce.

3 Ways I Lightened It:

Extra lean ground beef – You can also use ground turkey! Shredded cheddar cheese instead of sliced – Shredded cheese disperses throughout the salad much better than a slice of cheese would, so you can get away with using a little less while still tasting it in nearly every bite! Lightened the Big Mac dressing by using half Greek yogurt/half mayonnaise instead of all mayonnaise – Greek yogurt provides all the thick, creamy texture that mayonnaise does, but with far fewer calories! The bonus is that this dressing is supposed to be a little tangy/pickled in flavor, so Greek yogurt’s natural tang fits right in!

This salad is such a win. If you, like me, crave a good juicy cheeseburger pretty regularly, this is the way to enjoy one for a totally reasonable number of calories while incorporating a whole lot of filling and nutritious veggies! And if you have any picky eaters in your life, who wouldn’t dare touch a salad and love a McDonald’s run, I have a feeling this is the salad that could get them to eat their greens.

Make it and let me know if you love it as much as I do!