The Caesar salad bears its name in honor of the name of its creator, the culinary specialist Caesar Cardini. One fine day, he decided to cook his crown dish, but suddenly found that he did not have the necessary ingredients for this. But there was still something in reserve, therefore, after a little reflection, he created a separate dish, which then came to us as a classic Caesar salad, which is now loved by both adults and children.
We buy salad ingredients
There are many varieties of Caesar. However, regardless of whether we are preparing 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 discover 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 a regular white loaf, cherry tomatoes, sprinkled Parmesan cheese, romaine lettuce leaves , and fresh chicken fillet to prepare the classic Caesar salad with chicken or any other ingredient that you crave to see in this dish. But for the preparation of sauce - an integral part of the dish, you have to buy chicken eggs, mustard, garlic, lemon and olive oil. Well, every housewife certainly has salt and pepper, but if they are over, 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 try, you can safely begin cooking. It does not matter which component will be the main one in Caesar, the general principle of preparation of this dish is always the same and understandable to the chef. So, to create a dish and sauce for it you will need:
- one head of salad;
- 1 baguette or white loaf per 200 grams;
- 100 grams of cherry tomatoes, but other tomatoes will do;
- 50 grams of parmesan, but any other hard cheese is fine;
- 3 cloves of garlic;
- 150 ml of olive oil;
- 3 tablespoons of lemon juice;
- 1 tablespoon of mustard;
- 2 chicken eggs;
- pepper and salt to your liking.
The last component of the classic Caesar salad, be it shrimp, mushrooms, chicken, fish or anything else, we always take in the amount of 200 grams. Then we simply combine the torn sheets of green salad made from a loaf of crackers and the main component of the dish, which is completely ready to eat. After that, pour the prepared dish made with olive oil, lemon juice, mustard and egg yolks into the sauce, sprinkle with grated cheese and serve the dish to the table.
Cooking crackers for salad
It does not matter if you cook a classic simple Caesar salad with shrimps, chicken, bacon, mushrooms or any other main component, all the same, the first thing in the process of preparing the dish is to make crispy and aromatic crackers from the loaf you bought. To do this, cut off all the crusts from the bread, and then cut it into small cubes. Next, prepare the sauce, which will be croutons, to which crush 1 clove of garlic with a knife and pour three tablespoons of olive oil. After this, the composition should be heated in the microwave for 20 seconds, and it will be possible to fill them with crackers, which are then put in the oven and dried for half an hour at a temperature of 150 ° C.
Cooking Chicken Salad Fillet
Most often, novice cooks prepare at home a classic Caesar salad recipe, the main component of which will be chicken. Before cooking, chicken should be thoroughly washed in running water, and then dried with a paper towel. After that, the meat is cut lengthwise into 2-3 parts, salted on both sides and laid out in a pan. It will be necessary to fry the chicken fillet until golden brown, which will take about 7-8 minutes. At the final stage of preparation, the chicken will have to be cooled to room temperature, and then cut into cubes or small slices - at your discretion.
Cooking Salad Shrimp
Seafood lovers from all varieties of dishes most prefer the classic simple shrimp Caesar salad recipe. But just before you mix with the rest of the ingredients, you need to prepare seafood. To do this, shrimps purchased in a supermarket or on the market in the amount of 200-300 grams should first be boiled in salted water for three minutes. After that, we clear them of the shell, put them in a bowl with olive oil and garlic and pickle for half an hour. At the final stage, before adding the ingredient to the salad, it remains only to fry the shrimps on low heat for a minute, so that they become a pleasant golden color.
Let's prepare romaine salad for laying in the dish
The most important ingredients of the classic simple Caesar salad recipe are lettuce leaves. Most often, romaine lettuce leaves are used for this dish, but iceberg salad 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 this, lettuce leaves need to be torn into large pieces and sent to ice water, so that they do not fade and will pleasantly crunch with food.
Cooking dressing for dressing
It doesn’t matter if we cook a classic Caesar salad with chicken or it will be with bacon, seafood or anything else - its most important ingredient is the sauce, which the dish is watered before serving. The first step is to bring the eggs to room temperature, for which they need to 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 the proteins.
After that, we proceed to the preparation of the sauce for the classic Caesar salad. To do this, crush the garlic with a knife or crush it with a garlic squeezer, and then grind 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 salt 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 decorate and serve the dish
Also a very important aspect of creating a Caesar salad according to the classic recipe is its design and serving. To do everything right, you should lay out all the prepared ingredients in the correct sequence. The first is 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 and the like), which can either be mixed together or laid out in a checkerboard pattern. The third layer is hard cheese, which is rubbed on a coarse grater directly above the dish. And, finally, the dish is decorated with sliced cherry tomatoes or slices of ordinary tomatoes.
Caesar Salad with Chicken and Shrimp
As you can see, cooking at home Caesar salad according to the classic recipe is not too difficult even for novice cooks. It is also easy to cook all sorts of variations of the recipe, the most common of which is the creation of this dish with chicken and shrimp together. For its preparation, you will need the same ingredients as for a regular Caesar salad, only chicken should be 150 grams, and peeled shrimp - 100 grams. The cooking process itself is also identical to the classic recipe. The only thing in this case, when serving, the second layer will be chicken and shrimp, then the dishes are poured with sauce, and already the cheese is rubbed on it and crackers are placed. In this case, tomatoes do not need to be added.
Caesar salad with any additives
Having learned how to cook Caesar salad with shrimps according to the classic simple recipe, you can make this dish with any other additives. The main thing is to prepare them so that they are fully suitable for use without further processing. That is, mushrooms, fish should be boiled and fried, cut feta into large cubes, cut bacon ... There are simply no boundaries for fantasy. It is important that the amount of these additives is approximately equal to the number of crackers and green salad, then the dish will turn out balanced and will delight even the most picky gourmets.
Economical classic Caesar salad
It happens that there is simply no money for the most important ingredient in a salad, 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 a reason to refuse a favorite dish, which can be prepared without problems without this component. Just in this case, you will have to slightly convert the classic Caesar salad recipe. We will need:
- 400 grams of lettuce romaine or iceberg;
- 100 grams of loaf;
- 2 cloves of garlic;
- 50 grams of olive oil;
- 1 chicken egg;
- 1 teaspoon of Worcester sauce;
- 1 tablespoon of grated hard cheese;
- pepper and salt to taste.
First of all, you need to tear lettuce leaves and make crackers from the bread toasted in the oven. Then you can proceed to the design of the dish, for which you will first need to grate the bowl with garlic, and then put on it lettuce leaves, which must first be sprinkled with olive oil. Then lettuce leaves are moistened with Caesar salad sauce, which is prepared in the standard way, and a layer of crackers and grated cheese is placed on it. Salad is decorated with chopped boiled egg.
Fast Caesar Salad
If it so happened that you don’t have time to prepare a classic simple Caesar salad with chicken or seafood, then this recipe can be slightly transformed and whipped up your favorite dish. It will be possible to save time due to the fact that you can not roast crackers in the oven, but immediately buy ready-made ones in the supermarket - at least ordinary, even with different tastes (from garlic to hunting sausages), so that everyone can choose this ingredient for themselves. Yes, and the salad dressing can be replaced with regular mayonnaise. For such a dish, you only need to cook the chicken, frying it in a pan, and then collect all the ingredients together and pour the salad with purchased mayonnaise, which, of course, is better to take with a lower percentage of fat content.
Rolls with Caesar Salad
If the classic recipe for Caesar salad with shrimp, chicken or any other additives is already boring, you can try to cook this dish in an unusual variation in the form of rolls. Such an appetizer can be taken with you for a snack or put on the table, which it will decorate due to its unusualness. So, to prepare the rolls you will need:
- a thin sheet of pita bread;
- 150 grams of lettuce leaves;
- 200 grams of chicken, shrimp or any other additives;
- 100 grams of juicy tomato;
- 50 grams of hard cheese;
- 4 tablespoons of olive oil;
- 150 grams of homemade mayonnaise or natural yogurt without flavoring;
- 20 grams of capers;
- 20 grams of mustard;
- 60 grams of anchovies;
- 20 grams of olives.
To prepare the rolls, the first thing you need to do is boil or grill the chicken, and then, after cooling it, cut into small pieces. To prepare the same rolls according to the classic recipe for Caesar salad with shrimp, you can do even easier - just boil them and fry them. After that, you will need to cut the tomatoes in circles, grate 30 grams of cheese and tear the salad leaves in small pieces. At the next stage, all remaining components are collected in a blender bowl and whipped there until smooth.
In conclusion, it remains only to lay out the prepared ingredients on a layer of pita bread, having previously lubricated it with half 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. Further, all the laid out ingredients are smeared with the remaining sauce and wrapped in a roll, which is placed in a plastic wrap 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 or taken with you to work or study.