Caesar Salad

This homemade Caesar salad recipe is a combination of delicious flavors. From its freshly made croutons that gives the dish some goodness crunch to the creamiest Caesar salad dressing ever. I love this salad so much and it's really worth a try.

No wonder this is so popular, Caesar salad is fresh and hearty at its best. It’s served in a lot of respected restaurants for a reason. Its origin is known to be in Tijuana, Mexico, somewhere in the early 20th-century and has been named the most sophisticated dish to have been created in the Americas.

Salads are sometimes dull, but this one certainly isn’t. With an exciting combination of textures and flavors, the Caesar salad proves time and again why it’s the emperor of the salad world.

Forget about store-bought Caesar dressing and hard ready-made croutons, we’re making everything from scratch, so this recipe is perfectly homemade.

Related: Watermelon Feta Salad, Honey Mustard Chicken Salad

Why I love this Salad:

• The dressing is creamy, tangy and so addicting thanks to anchovies, garlic, Dijon and Worcestershire lending their flavors to the mayo-based sauce for one delicious bite after another.
• Ideal for any weeknight meal but also high-end and good-looking to impress friends and family.
• Easy to assemble.
• Very forgiving salad, you can use different greens, add proteins like grilled chicken, shrimp, boiled eggs or salmon or even combine with pasta.
• Light but at the same time very filling.

Caesar Salad Ingredients List

What's in a Caesar salad?

• Greens. The base of a Caesar salad is always romaine lettuce BUT you can use any greens to your liking. Shredded into bits or served whole, the romaine leaves are the flavor carriers, and they always deliver a crunchy, refreshing bite.

• Croutons. No Caesar is complete without authentic bite-sized toasted crusty bread. Store-bought croutons can be a bit dry and hard to chew, but when freshly made, these are starchy bits of heaven.

• Parmesan cheese. Caesar salad cheese plays a critical role, giving the Mexican salad an Italian feel. Parmesan cheese is essential and hard to substitute.

• Caesar Salad Dressing. Finally, there’s the dressing, and in the finest restaurants, they’ll put it together table-side a la minute. This dressing recipe is adapted from Once upon a chef:
  • Anchovy fillets or paste
  • Minced garlic
  • Lemon juice
  • Worcestershire sauce
  • Dijon mustard
  • Mayonnaise - this recipe uses mayo instead of the classic raw eggs
  • Parmesan
  • Salt
  • Ground black pepper

How to Make Caesar Salad?

1. Make the Dressing. Combine anchovies and garlic in a bowl. If using fillets, chop them together until it turns into paste. Squeeze in lemon juice, add worcestershire sauce, dijon, mayo, parmesan and season with salt and pepper. Whisk until everything is fully combined. Set aside.
2. Make the croutons. Preheat oven at 375 degrees F. Slice your crusty bread into bite sizes. Assemble in a baking sheet pan and toss with olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Bake for 15 minutes, tossing from time to time.
3. The Greens. Wash and dry the lettuce. Serve the leaves whole or roughly chop them into bite-sized pieces.
4. Assemble. In a salad bowl, toss the lettuce, croutons and dressing altogether. Topped it with freshly grated parmesan.

Tips to Make the Perfect Caesar Salad

• Rinse the lettuce thoroughly and pat it dry before assembling the salad. Every drop of water dilutes the dressing’s flavor! Serving the leaves whole is also recommended.

• Make the croutons yourself. They’re best when freshly-made and super crunchy. Avoid the store-bought ones.

• Caesar Salad dressing with anchovies makes the salad more flavorsome. Incorporate every ingredient one a time and combine each one it into the mixture completely before adding the next element.

• Buy a block of Parmesan cheese or similar avoiding the one that comes in already shredded packs. Freshly grated cheese is always better. Much better if it's Parmigiano-Reggiano. Nothing beats the authentic. To have that nice and thin shaved cheese on top, use a vegetable peeler.

Caesar Salad’s Substitutions and Variations

Since today we’re making an easy Caesar salad dressing, we’re starting with a fine-quality mayo, but a cool substitution is to make your own emulsion of olive oil and egg whites for the base of the dressing. Just whisk, whisk, whisk!

A fantastic and apparent variation of the salad is that you can add any protein you like to turn the salad into a complete meal. Shrimp and grilled chicken are popular alternatives, but Lobster or crab meat will make the salad shine too! Even salmon and boiled eggs can turn it to protein-loaded meal.

Let’s check out my Caesar salad recipe and make this classic from scratch. You’ll have tons of fun putting together this classic!