Caesar salad with grilled chicken, garlic croutons and parmesan
The salad you order in every restaurant and make at home in half an hour, and better: crisp romaine wrapped in a creamy dressing, chicken from a griddle pan, croutons baked with garlic and olive oil, parmesan shaved with a peeler. A dressing without raw egg, on mayonnaise with yogurt, so it is safe and ready in two minutes. The whole art: dry lettuce, dressing on the leaves, toppings on top.
Your own work in that: 35 min.
- Croutons 12 min
- Chicken 12 min
- Dressing 6 min
- Assembling 5 min
Step by step
0 / 6 doneBake the croutons
Heat the oven to 200 °C. Cut the roll into 2 cm cubes, toss with 2 spoons of olive oil, a crushed garlic clove and a pinch of salt. Spread on a tray and bake 8–10 minutes, stirring halfway, until golden and dry. Cool.
Ingredients: 1 pcs romaine lettuce · 400 g chicken breast · 3 tbsp olive oil · 1 pcs white roll or baguette · 2 cloves garlic · 60 g parmesan · 1 tsp salt · ½ tsp black pepper
TipOven croutons are evenly crisp and stay that way for hours. No packet crouton gives you this flavour of garlic and olive oil.
2 cm cubes, olive oil, garlic, golden in 10 minutesGrill the chicken
Cut the breast lengthways into two thinner fillets, pound lightly to 1.5 cm, rub with a spoon of olive oil, salt and pepper. Heat a griddle pan over high heat until it starts to smoke. Cook 4 minutes a side without moving, so the stripes form; the meat should be white inside with no pink juices (74 °C). Take off and rest on a board 5 minutes, then slice across the grain.
A hot pan, 4 minutes a side, 5 minutes restMake the dressing
Mix the mayonnaise with the yogurt, the second garlic clove crushed through a press, the lemon juice, mustard, pepper and 2 spoons of parmesan finely grated. It should be as thick as cream; if thicker, loosen with a spoon of water.
Ingredients: 3 tbsp mayonnaise · 2 tbsp natural yogurt · ½ pcs lemon, juice · 1 tsp Dijon mustard · ¼ tsp black pepper
TipThe classic dressing is made with a raw or briefly coddled egg, often with anchovies. Mayonnaise safely replaces the egg, and the anchovy version is in the tips; parmesan and mustard give enough umami for the dressing to stand without them.
Mayonnaise, yogurt, garlic, lemon, parmesanPrepare the lettuce
Separate the lettuce into leaves, wash and dry thoroughly in a spinner or on a cloth. Tear large leaves by hand into 2–3 pieces; leave small ones whole. Wet lettuce repels the dressing and waters it down, which is why drying matters more than it seems.
Leaves dried, torn by handToss the lettuce with the dressing
In a large bowl toss the lettuce with three-quarters of the dressing, ideally by hand, turning the leaves until each is thinly coated. Dressing on the leaves, not on top: that is the difference between a Caesar and lettuce with mayonnaise.
By hand, every leaf in the dressingAssemble and serve
Transfer the lettuce to a bowl, lay the chicken slices on top, scatter the croutons and shave the rest of the parmesan over with a peeler. Drizzle with the remaining dressing, grind pepper over. Serve at once, before the croutons soften.
Chicken, croutons, parmesan shavings, pepper
Before you start
With anchovies, the classic way
2 anchovy fillets mashed with a fork into the dressing; then go lighter on the salt for the chicken and croutons. You don't taste fish, you taste depth. Caesar Cardini, credited with the salad (Tijuana, 1920s), reportedly used no anchovies — the fishy note came from Worcestershire sauce; anchovies joined the recipe later.
Without chicken
Instead of chicken, 2 soft-boiled eggs halved or 150 g smoked salmon. The quick-supper version with no pan.
For work, in a jar
Dressing at the bottom, then chicken, croutons in a separate bag, lettuce on top. Toss just before eating; keeps in the fridge until the next day.
