In episode 093 we are making a Caesar Salad with Grilled Chicken and with Anchovy Free Caesar Dressing. This is an excellent dinner to have in the warmer summer months when you don’t want to heat up your house making dinner. It is pretty low effort, especially if you can buy grilled chicken at the store!
Side note- this Caesar salad not only makes an amazing dinner, it makes a great side dish for just about any Italian dinner!
Transcript
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Intro: Hey. Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich.
Susie Weinrich: What’s up everybody? Hello. Hello. Happy Thursday. I am so glad you’re here. We are kind of jumping right into summer, which I talked about last week. So we’re trying to make some dinner recipes here that are easier, lighter, aren’t going to heat up your house, and don’t require a ton of work or focus, and this one is one that I absolutely love. It’s newer on my website, Mom’s Dinner, but it is so delicious and when we serve this for dinner, everybody loves it.
We’re making Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad for dinner tonight. So the thing about this recipe is that we are making our own Caesar dressing, and we’re going to make it without anchovies. I have to be honest. I don’t love it, I don’t eat a ton of fish. I will say, when I have Caesar salads I don’t love the really strong, fishy flavor that some Caesar dressings have. So I wanted to set out to make a Caesar salad dressing that was still really deep in flavor, rich in flavor but didn’t contain that fish element. If you are like me or if you have trouble finding, you know anchovies, this is going to be a great recipe for you to make for dinner this summer.
Tips and Trucks: So let’s go over a couple of tips and tricks for making your Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad. The very first thing that I do want to say is that the recipe calls for Worcestershire sauce. If you look at the ingredients of Worcestershire sauce, usually it does contain anchovies. However, I am very sensitive to that anchovy flavor, and I personally cannot taste it there. If you are making this dressing, because you can’t have the anchovy, if it’s an allergy thing, you’ll want to avoid using the Worcestershire sauce or find one that is anchovy free completely.
Another ingredient that we are putting in the dressing is Parmesan cheese. I say this with all of our recipes that contain any kind of Parmesan cheese, always buy the best one you can. Parmesan cheese will vary greatly in flavor. So you can get just the little processed triangle at the store, it will definitely do the job. But if you go to a grocery store that has a larger wheel of Parmesan cheese that they’re cutting chunks of Parmesan from, it is going to have a completely different flavor for you. It is a little bit more tart and way more nutty and deep in flavor, which is what you want when you’re making a Caesar salad dressing.
Let’s also talk about serving size really quickly. In this recipe for the dressing, one recipe will coat about one large head of romaine lettuce. So you can kind of start to do your math from there. If you think that one large head of romaine lettuce will feed your entire family, then you just need one recipe of the Caesar salad dressing. If you think it’s going to take two, then go ahead and make two recipes of the Caesar salad dressing. For my family, if we’re having salad, we’re probably going to eat a lot of salad. So we have a family of four and I would probably most likely use two heads of romaine lettuce.
Now obviously we’re making a Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad. So for the grilled chicken, if you have a grocery store that has grilled chicken in the deli section, grab that, chop it up, and put it on top of the salad. If you want to actually get your grill out and maybe you’re even planning ahead of time, I have a fantastic recipe for buttermilk marinated grilled chicken on Mom’s Dinner that I will link in the show notes for you. When you marinate your chicken breast in buttermilk, woo. It makes it so tender and juicy and amazing and flavorful. I’m telling you, when you grill chicken, it is the only way to go. So I will link that for you right in the show notes.
Let’s go ahead and get into making the full recipe for Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad for dinner tonight. You’re going to want to start by processing your romaine lettuce. Anytime you’re making a salad, if you’re going to wash the lettuce leaves, you want them to be dry so that the salad dressing will stick to the actual leaves. So what I recommend is washing up your romaine lettuce, wrapping it either in paper towels, or you can put it in a salad spinner, and then just let it sit while you get everything else ready.
If you’re going to grill the chicken, go ahead and do that now. Otherwise, we’re going to go on to make the Caesar salad dressing. You know what, I’m going to preface this by saying we’re making one recipe that will coat one large head of romaine lettuce. So if you want more, then you’re going to double what I’m saying here.
So you’re going to take one large clove of fresh garlic, you’re going to put that on your cutting board, and then you’re going to take a quarter teaspoon of kosher salt. You’re going to put that over top of the garlic, and then you’re going to take the backside, just the flat side of a large knife, and you’re going to run it across that garlic using the salt as an abrasive. You’re going to mash that garlic down into a paste. Once it’s down to a complete paste, you’ll scrape it up with that knife and transfer it to a bowl. Then you’re going to add in a quarter cup of fresh grated Parmesan cheese, one tablespoon of freshly squeezed lemon juice, two tablespoons of mayonnaise, one teaspoon of Dijon mustard, and one teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce. Half a teaspoon or just a couple of dashes of hot sauce. This would be like Tabasco or whatever your favorite hot sauce is. Then a quarter teaspoon of black pepper. You’re going to whisk or stir that all together. Let me tell you this if you’re making more than one recipe, so if you’re making 2, 3, or 4 recipes of this, you can actually do this process in a blender or a food processor.
All right, so after you get that all mixed, you’re going to slowly drizzle in a quarter cup of extra virgin olive oil while you’re whisking. So maybe if you’re right-handed, have the whisk in your right hand, have a quarter cup of extra virgin olive oil in your left hand, and just slowly drizzle it in while you’re whisking with your right hand, or if you’re left-handed, vice versa.
So at the end of this process, you’re just going to taste it for additional seasoning. Salt, pepper, if you want more lemon juice if you want more garlic, maybe it’s too tart, you can even add a dash of honey if it’s too tart. Then you can use it or you can store it in your fridge for up to a week.
But since we’re making it for dinner, we’re going to go ahead and toss that on our washed and dried romaine lettuce. Then what I like to do after I toss that, is add the croutons and the shaved or shredded Parmesan cheese and I toss it again. Then when I serve it, I top each person’s portion with a little bit of grilled chicken and maybe serve it up with some garlic bread or some warm ciabatta bread and dipping oil, and that’s the complete dinner.
Super easy and super perfect for summertime. Now, the Caesar salad, I will also tell you it’s a great side dish to any Italian dinner. You can make it and not add the grilled chicken and just have it as a side dish. Amazing.
All right, so that does it for the full recipe and for this episode today of Let’s Make Dinner. As always, I will link all of these recipes for you in the show notes, but also just to let you know, you can find all of my recipes on my website, Mom’s Dinner, and that is momsdinner.net. That’s where I share all of these recipes and they are free. You can print them, pin them, you can cook them right from the website.
If you need to go to the grocery store and you’re on your phone, you can actually text yourself all of the ingredients in the recipes that you want, and a link back to the recipe. Super user-friendly. Let me tell you about this other feature. If you are cooking from your phone, and you know how sometimes when you’re cooking and your phone goes dark, and then you’re like, oh God, now I gotta touch my phone and my fingers are dirty, there’s something on my recipe card called Cook Mode. If you click it on, it’s right in the middle of the recipe card, it will prevent your screen from going dark while you’re cooking. Super user-friendly.
Outro: All right, until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner, makes your dinner time a little bit easier. See ya.
Double Dip: All right guys, now it’s time for your double dip. Thank you so much for sticking around. If you are loving these episodes of Let’s Make Dinner and they’re helping you get dinner on the table, every week, you can stay and listen to what we’re making next week. You can grab the ingredients and be ready to cook along for dinner next Thursday.
We are making Frito Taco salads. This is a great meat-free dinner salad idea. It’s hearty enough to be filling but easy and light enough that it’s perfect for summer. So let’s go over the full ingredient list that you want to have when it’s time to make dinner next week. You need one large head of iceberg lettuce. You could also use Romaine if you prefer that. 15-ounce can of chili beans in sauce, Catalina dressing. It’s an orange dressing that you’ll find just with all of the other salad dressings, and you only need a little bit, so you can just buy the smallest container that they have available at the store. You’ll need two cups of Fritos, and one cup of chopped fresh tomatoes, Cherry tomatoes, or Roma tomatoes work really well here. One cup of shredded cheddar cheese and half a cup of chopped green onions and that’s it. It makes a wonderful dinner. So I hope you’ll join me then and make a Frito Taco salad with me next week.
Until then, have a wonderful week ahead. See ya.
Recipes Mentioned
Next Week
I hope you will join me every Thursday and make dinner! Next week are making another dinner salad. This time it is a meat free option, Frito Taco Salad! Grab the ingredients on your next grocery run and we’ll chat next week!
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