Caesar salad: a classic recipe, cooking features and recommendations

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Caesar salad bears its name in honor of the name of its creator - chef Caesar Cardini. One fine day, he decided to cook his signature dish, but suddenly found that he did not have the necessary ingredients for this. But there was still something in stock, so, after a little thought, he created a separate dish, which then came to us as a classic Caesar salad, which is now loved by both adults and children.

Buying salad ingredients

There are a huge number of varieties of "Caesar". However, regardless of whether we prepare a classic Caesar salad with shrimp, chicken, feta cheese, avocado, turkey, ham, fish or any other main ingredient, the rest of the ingredients remain the same. Therefore, if you do not want, like Cardini, to suddenly find that it is impossible to cook the desired dish, you should go to the store in advance and purchase the necessary components there.

You will need an ordinary white loaf, cherry tomatoes, parmesan cheese fortoppings, romaine lettuce leaves, as well as fresh chicken fillet for making a classic Caesar salad with chicken or any other ingredient that you crave to see in this dish. But to prepare the sauce - an integral part of the dish, you will have to buy chicken eggs, mustard, garlic, lemon and olive oil. Well, s alt and pepper, for sure, every housewife already has, but if they run out, then, of course, they will also have to be purchased.

General salad recipe

After purchasing all the ingredients and choosing the kind of classic Caesar salad that you want to taste, you can safely start cooking. It does not matter which component will be the main one in Caesar, but the general principle of preparing this dish is always the same and understandable to the culinary specialist. So, to create a dish and a sauce for it, you will need:

• one head of lettuce;
• 1 baguette or white loaf per 200 grams;
• 100 grams of cherry tomatoes, but other tomatoes will do;
• 50 grams Parmesan, but any other hard cheese will do;
• 3 garlic cloves;
• 150 ml olive oil;
• 3 tablespoons of lemon juice;
• 1 tablespoon mustard;
• 2 chicken eggs;
• pepper and s alt to your liking.

The last component of the classic Caesar salad, whether it be shrimp, mushrooms, chicken, fish or something else, we always take in the amount of 200 grams. Then we just put the torn lettuce leaves together,croutons made from a long loaf and the main component of the dish, completely ready for use. After that, pour the finished dish with sauce made from olive oil, lemon juice, mustard and egg yolks, sprinkle with grated cheese and serve the dish to the table.

Cooking croutons for salad

It doesn't matter if you are preparing a classic simple Caesar salad with shrimp, chicken, bacon, mushrooms or any other main ingredient, anyway, the first step in the cooking process should be to make crispy and fragrant crackers from a purchased loaf. To do this, you need to cut off all the crusts from the bread, and then cut it into small cubes. Next, we prepare the sauce with which the croutons will be poured, for which we crush 1 clove of garlic with a knife and pour three tablespoons of olive oil. After that, the composition should be heated in a microwave oven for 20 seconds, and it will be possible to fill it with crackers, which then put in the oven and dry for half an hour at a temperature of 150 ° С.

Cooking chicken fillet for salad

Most often, novice cooks cook at home the classic Caesar salad recipe, the main component of which will be chicken. Before cooking, the chicken fillet must be thoroughly rinsed in running water, and then dried with a paper towel. After that, the meat is cut lengthwise into 2-3 parts, s alted on both sides and laid out in a pan. You will need to fry the chicken fillet until a golden crust forms, which will take about 7-8 minutes. At the final stagepreparation, the chicken will have to be cooled to room temperature, and then cut into either cubes or small slices - at your discretion.

Cooking shrimp for salad

Seafood lovers of all varieties of dishes prefer the classic simple recipe for Caesar salad with shrimp. That's just before mixing with the rest of the ingredients, seafood needs to be prepared. To do this, shrimp bought in a supermarket or on the market in the amount of 200-300 grams should initially be boiled in s alted water for three minutes. After that, we clean them from the shell, put them in a bowl with olive oil and garlic and marinate for half an hour. At the final stage, before adding the ingredient to the salad, all that remains is to fry the shrimp over low heat for a minute so that they become a pleasant golden color.

Prepare romaine lettuce for plating

The most important ingredients in the classic easy Caesar salad recipe are lettuce leaves. Most often, romaine lettuce leaves are used for this dish, but iceberg lettuce is also suitable. At the very beginning of the preparation, you will need to thoroughly rinse the bunch of lettuce under running water, and then leave to dry for 10 minutes. After that, the lettuce leaves should be torn into large pieces and sent to ice water, so that they will not wilt and will be nice to crunch while eating.

Preparing the dressing sauce

It doesn't matter if we make a classic salad"Caesar" with chicken or it will be with bacon, seafood or anything else - its most important ingredient is the sauce that is poured over the dish before serving. The first step is to bring the eggs to room temperature, for which they must either be pulled out of the refrigerator a couple of hours before cooking, or put in warm water for 10 minutes. Then boil the eggs for a minute, cool and separate their yolks from proteins.

After that, we start preparing the sauce for the classic Caesar salad. To do this, we strongly chop the garlic with a knife or crush it with a garlic crusher, and then grind it together with two yolks and mustard until a homogeneous state is obtained. After that, add the juice squeezed from the lemon and a small amount of s alt to the dry mass, and at the end, gradually pour the remaining olive oil into the container, which will make the dressing liquid. The main thing is to constantly stir the sauce during cooking, and then the result will be just magical.

How to properly decorate and serve a dish

Also, a very important aspect of creating a Caesar salad according to a classic recipe is its presentation and serving. To do everything right, you should lay out all the prepared ingredients in the correct sequence. First comes a layer of crispy torn lettuce leaves, then a layer of a mixture of crackers and chicken or any other component (shrimp, bacon, mushrooms, feta cheese, etc.), which can either be mixed together or put intocheckerboard pattern. The third layer is hard cheese, which is rubbed on a coarse grater right above the dish. And, finally, the dish is decorated with cherry tomatoes cut in half or slices of ordinary tomatoes.

Caesar salad with chicken and shrimps

As you can see, making Caesar salad at home according to the classic recipe is not difficult even for novice cooks. It’s just as easy to make all sorts of variations of the recipe, the most common of which is creating this dish with chicken and shrimp together. To prepare it, you will need the same ingredients as for a regular Caesar salad, only chicken fillet should be 150 grams, and peeled shrimp - 100 grams. The very process of preparing the dish is also identical to the classic recipe. The only thing in this case, when serving, the second layer will be chicken with shrimp, then the dish is poured with sauce, and cheese is already rubbed on it and croutons are placed. In this case, you do not need to add tomatoes.

Caesar salad with any additions

After learning how to make a classic easy recipe for shrimp Caesar salad, you can make this dish with any other additions. The main thing is to prepare them so that they are completely usable without further processing. That is, mushrooms, fish should be boiled and fried, feta should be cut into large cubes, bacon should be cut … There are simply no boundaries to fantasy. It is important that the amount of these additives be approximately equal to the amount of crackers andgreen salad, then the dish will turn out to be balanced and will please even the pickiest gourmets.

Economical classic Caesar salad

It happens that there is simply no money for the most important salad ingredient, or there is a post on the street and then you can’t eat shrimp, chicken, or any other meat or seafood. But this is not at all a reason to refuse your favorite dish, which can be prepared without problems without this component. Just in this case, you will have to quite a bit transform the classic Caesar salad recipe. We will need:

• 400 grams of romaine or iceberg lettuce leaves;
• 100 grams of loaf;
• 2 garlic cloves;
• 50 grams of olive oil;
• 1 chicken egg;
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce;
• 1 tablespoon grated hard cheese;
• pepper and s alt to taste.

First of all, you need to tear the lettuce leaves and make croutons from bread toasted in the oven. Then you can proceed to the design of the dish, for which you will first need to rub the bowl with garlic, and then put lettuce leaves on it, which must first be sprinkled with olive oil. Next, lettuce leaves are moistened with Caesar salad dressing, which is prepared in the standard way, and a layer of croutons and grated cheese is placed on it. The salad is decorated with chopped boiled egg.

Quick Caesar salad

If it so happens that you do not have time to prepare a classic simple salad"Caesar" with chicken or seafood, then this recipe can be slightly transformed and build your favorite dish in a hurry. It will be possible to save time due to the fact that it will be possible not to fry croutons in the oven, but immediately buy ready-made ones in the supermarket - at least ordinary ones, at least with different tastes (from garlic to hunting sausages), so that everyone can choose this ingredient at their own discretion. Yes, and the dressing in the salad can be replaced with regular mayonnaise. For such a dish, you only need to cook the chicken by frying it in a pan, and then put all the ingredients together and pour the salad with store-bought mayonnaise, which, of course, is better to take with a lower percentage of fat content.

Caesar salad rolls

If you are tired of the classic Caesar salad recipe with shrimp, chicken or any other additions, you can try cooking this dish in an unusual variation in the form of rolls. You can take such an appetizer with you for a snack or put it on the table, which it will decorate due to its unusualness. So, to make rolls you will need:

• thin sheet of lavash;
• 150 grams of lettuce leaves;
• 200 grams of chicken fillet, shrimp or any other additives;
• 100 grams of juicy tomatoes;
• 50 grams of hard cheese;
• 4 tablespoons olive oil;
• 150 grams of homemade mayonnaise or unflavoured natural yoghurt;
• 20 grams of capers;
• 20 grams of mustard;
• 60 grams anchovies;
• 20 grams of olives.

To prepare the rolls, the first step is to boil or grill the chicken fillet, and then, after cooling it, cut it into small pieces. To prepare rolls according to the classic Caesar salad recipe with shrimp, you can do it even easier - just boil them and fry them. After that, you will need to cut the tomatoes into circles, grate 30 grams of cheese and tear lettuce leaves into small pieces. At the next stage, all the remaining components are collected in a blender bowl and whipped there until smooth.

In conclusion, all that remains is to put the prepared ingredients on a layer of pita bread, after smearing it with half of the resulting sauce. The components are laid out with a five-centimeter deviation from the edge of the pita bread in this order - lettuce, tomatoes, grated cheese and chicken, shrimp or any other main component on top. Then all the laid out ingredients are smeared with the remaining sauce and wrapped in a roll, which is placed in cling film and sent to the refrigerator for a couple of hours. In the final, the roll is cut into small rolls, and they can already be served at the table or taken with you to work or school.