How to Make Caesar Salad From SCRATCH | Chef Jean-Pierre

Well, hello there friends, another fantastic show today. I'm gonna make a traditional Caesar salad dressing. Stay tuned, I'm gonna show you exactly how to do it. Don't forget, thumbs up if you like the video, subscribe to the channel, and ring that bell. We'll be right back. Well, hello there friends. Let me show you how to make my favorite Caesar salad. Years ago, when I was in the restaurant business, long time ago, we used to make a table side to people. Oh, that was really something. When was the last time you went to a restaurant and they made a Caesar salad for you? They don't make a Caesar salad anymore. You could use a food processor. But anyway, let me get to the recipe, okay? First thing we're gonna do, my friends, we're gonna make the crouton. Because you don't wanna be buying them crouton, them box of crouton. They've been in the box 17 years already. You wanna make your fresh crouton easier. Take a piece of bread, like I buy a country bread. Look, just a regular country bread, right? And then I cut a piece. You know what I do? I try to buy the day before. So it's not as soft, if you will, right? And then I take a knife, and I love this one here. This offset deli slicer. It's not a serrated knife, but it cuts bread like amazing. You see, look, go right in there, right? So you see the bread is not so soft. And then I cut them, you know, cut them as little or as big as you want them. You know, if you make extra crouton, nothing wrong with that. I love them. I'll tell you, just like this, right? The crusty, maybe it's not so much, right? And then what I do is I take a bowl, and I put a little bit of chopped garlic in here. Just regular chopped garlic, right? I put it all in there, what do you think? And then some chopped parsley, right? Boom, boom. And then I got this beautiful garlic olive oil. Okay, if you don't have garlic olive oil, just don't worry. You got enough garlic in there, right? And then you mix all this up just like this, right? Very simple, huh, my friends? Maybe a little more, what do you think? Extra olive oil is not gonna hurt anything, right? And then you take all your bread right there. Very simple, a child could do this. I'm telling you, friends, a child could do this, right? And then mix them up, my friends. Look at this. Mix them up, mix them up, mix them up. You could do it with butter also, you know? I do the same thing sometime in a fry pan with butter. You know, I like butter. Butter is good for you, my friend. Don't let anybody tell you butter is no good for you. Beautiful olive oil, beautiful butter, all this is good stuff for you. Don't let anybody tell you, oh no, don't do that, don't do that, do whatever makes you happy. Okay, here we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's so many people that have so many opinions out there. Sometime I wonder where do they come from. Let me get a spatula, my friends. I think it's gonna help me a little better if I take a spatula and mix it all up, you see? And then you're good. You're just like that, just like that, you see? Just like that. And then what we do, I'll tell you what we're gonna do. We're gonna do it right now. We're gonna take a little bit of Parmesan cheese, eh? Just a little Parmesan here, here you go. Little bit of Parmigiano-Reggiano. Oh, now we're talking. Forget about it, look at this. Forget about it. That's my New York accent. I could fool you, right, I'm from, yeah. How you doing? See, not bad, right? What do you think? I'm telling you, I could pass from New York. Sometime I go, I see New York and say, hey, how you doing? Oh, you're from New York, oh yeah. Yeah, the French side. Check it out, folks. Put it like this, right? And then you go in an oven. Yeah, you go in an oven. You go in an oven at, I don't know, 375, 400. Now the key, the secret here, friends, is don't forget them in the oven. So you know what I got? I got a timer in here. I'm gonna start at five minutes. This time, I'm not waiting on nobody. All right, Caesar salad dressing, my friends. Very simple. We're gonna make, a Caesar salad dressing is like a mayonnaise and a mulsion, a mulsion, okay? And what it is, is garlic and then chauvise. Then I bind it with a Dijon mustard. So we take the garlic cloves. We smash it on a cutting board. Just a little bit like this, right? And then we take a chef's knife and we give it a better smack. And then we're gonna smack it all into a nice, beautiful puree, okay? Just very simple, right? We take two or three and chauvise. If you don't like chauvise, don't worry. You'll never know they're in there. I promise you, friends. You'll never know they're in there. Put some salt in there. The salt is gonna act like sandpaper. It's gonna help you make a nice paste. I promise you, at the beginning, you're gonna say, well, it's not gonna work. It's gonna work, I promise you. You watch, we're gonna make a puree so fine and then we're gonna take the knife and we're gonna go in there. We're gonna make a puree and then we're gonna bind this. This is gonna be a binding agent with the Dijon mustard and the egg yolk. And then we're gonna create an emulsion. This is how you bind it together. I promise you, the secret of a good salsa dressing, it's about the dressing. It's not about the romaine or the crouton. I mean, all those are wonderful and very important indeed. But it is really, really, really, really, really, my friends, about the dressing. And I'm gonna make you a dressing. I promise you, the good thing is you can make it in advance, friends, and you can keep it in the fridge for three, four days, four, five days without any problem whatsoever. Let's see what we got. Little more salt I'm gonna put in because I really, really wanna puree this really, really fine. So the salt is gonna help me make a better puree, okay? Now, secret for all of you, then I have a food processor. Good news. You have a food processor, my friend. You do all this with a food processor and you can make the whole dressing with a food processor. Okay, friends, we're gonna take this, boom, inside the salad dressing, inside the bowl where we're gonna make our salad. This is where we're gonna make the emulsion, okay? If you don't like anchovies, don't worry. I promise you, you'll never know they're in there. You'll never know they're in there. It's a flavor enhancer. All right, let me put it aside. Ingredient, Dijon mustard, two yolks, two yolks. One egg yolk in an emulsion can absorb as much as 3 1⁄4 cup of oil. So you figure, you got two, you can do about a cup and a quarter, a cup and a half of dressing. Just to give you an idea. Salt, Worcestershire sauce. You don't have to use it, it's traditional. I always use this. I put a lemon olive oil. You don't have a lemon olive oil, use a regular olive oil. You don't have olive oil, you just use a beautiful oil, whatever oil makes you happy, okay? Sunflower oil is wonderful, whatever makes you happy. And I got a plain balsamic vinegar, white balsamic vinegar. You don't have one of those? Don't be using the white vinegar. The white vinegar is for the window and the floor, okay? Use a white wine vinegar or a champagne vinegar, okay? All right, so let's make the dressing now. Dijon mustard. And it gotta be Dijon mustard, okay? Dijon mustard is a binding agent. Egg yolks. Boom, boom. Okay, I gotta get a whisk. I forgot a whisk. Yeah, it's okay, you know, because I got a drawer full of whisk. All right, so now we're gonna create the emulsion. We're gonna put lemon juice later on. Don't let me forget the lemon juice. Hey, why don't we check out the croutons just in case? Hey, how they doing? How you doing in there? Good, okay, they're doing good. They're doing good. Plus, you know, I'm gonna saute some shrimp and chicken for the sida salad. We're gonna do it right there. So we're looking good right here, right? We got a little texture. So now we're gonna put the oil. Where's my oil? Here's my oil. Lemon-olive oil. So now, my friend, when you're making the emulsion, the egg is a binding agent. Remember, the egg is gonna absorb the oil. And if we do it too fast, you saturate the wall of the egg and your mayonnaise is gonna break. So be careful when you do this, you wanna do it slowly. So you put the oil in a constant, you don't have to be constant, you just gotta be slowly. That's it. If you do it too fast, you'll break the emulsion. And if you break the emulsion, what do you do? All of a sudden, you're looking at it and you're drizzling. Instead of looking creamy, it looks broken, you know, like curdle, if you will. What do you do if that happens? Don't lose faith. Take another bowl, take another egg yolk, a little bit of Dijon mustard, then take your broken dressing, then you're just broke because you put the oil too fast. It's not creamy, it's all oily. And start again, putting the broken dressing into the new bowl with the one egg and one mustard. And I promise you, it comes right back. But be careful, see, look, see how slowly I'm doing it? And I see a lot of people, they put the lemon juice now. You don't put the lemon juice now, you put it at the end. And the Worcestershire sauce, you put it at the end. You see, look, that's an emulsion, my friends. You see? Look at it, kind of like I'm making a mayonnaise. That's when I make a mayonnaise, that's how I do it. It's very simple. So see, look, look, look, look, I'll show you, show you. Look in here. You see right here, friends? You see how it looks broken right there? Because I went too fast. So when it's like that, take it easy. Then a minute and come back and bring it in. Bring it in, bring it in, you see? So you can't be talking too much when you do this. See, look, look, when you go too fast, it breaks. But that's okay, because you don't put anymore. You wait until it's absorbed. It takes a little while to be absorbed, you see? That's how you make an emulsion. This dressing, my friends, this is gonna be amazing. I'm telling you, you're gonna love it. So I got the salt already, right? Because of the anchovy and the garlic. Then I made the paste already, right? Look how beautiful that is. Oh, yeah, I like it. I like it, very beautiful. Now, my mayonnaise is gonna be too thick. It's wonderful. I love it when it's thick, because then I'm gonna put the Worcestershire sauce, the vinegar, and the lemon juice. And you know what that's gonna do? It's gonna make it liquid enough so I can rub it all over my lettuce. Ha, ha, ha, ha. I'm telling you. Welcome to all the new people, by the way. You know, during the holidays of Thanksgiving, we got 30, 35,000 new subscriber every month. So it's been two months now with 70,000 new people. God bless you all. And welcome to the wonderful channel. We love you guys. Okay, look, look. This is very thick, you see? I'm gonna give it a break. Let me get the, let me get the, the shrimp. I'm gonna put a little shrimp and a little bit of chicken tenderloin. Then I'm gonna cook really quick just to put next to the Caesar salad. I like to make it a meal when I make a Caesar salad, right? With the chicken or the shrimp. Today I'm gonna put both of them. You can put one or the other, or you can don't put anything. You can just have plain Caesar salad, eh? So let's put a little more. We're looking really good here. I wanna put enough dressing. You know, make enough dressing. Yeah, I like to make extra. I make extra, so tomorrow I got extra. Okay, so look, looking beautiful. We're looking very firm. Well, it's wonderful, right? Okay, so now you watch what's gonna happen. We're gonna take the Worcestershire sauce. You don't have to put the Worcestershire sauce if you don't want. But that's the way I've been making it for years. And my customers love it, trust me. I made millions of them. Millions? Yeah, millions. Millions. That's a lot. I made a lot of them, okay? A little bit of white vinegar. Be careful when you put the white vinegar, friends, because that's acid, and the acid is gonna slow, it's gonna break down. Not break down, it's gonna make the emulsion more liquid. We're gonna cut the lemon in half, and we're gonna put, you know what? I'm surprised my timer didn't go off. Oh, a little lemon juice, fresh lemon juice. I am surprised my, I need a little more lemon juice. I'm surprised my timer didn't go off. Maybe it was not five minutes. I better check my crouton, otherwise, you know. Oh, they're good. They're like, they're not even ready yet. How you doing, guys over there? Everybody happy in there? Oh, yeah. Yeah, just checking. Making sure everybody's happy in there. All right, let's see, folks. We're doing good. Let me see the temperature of my oil. I can smell it, so I'm pretty sure it's pretty good. I can smell it. But you see, it's really good. You got the thermometer. You're looking at about 365, then you know. And how's my timer doing? You know, I'm not very good. I didn't click on start. I am totally challenged. I put the timer on five minutes. I said, you know what? I'm gonna show them off. I'm gonna put a timer on it, and then I'm gonna show them over there that I can do it on my own, right? Except I didn't turn it on. Oh, thank goodness. Thank goodness I can cook, right? Otherwise, I don't know what they'll have me here for. All right, friends, look. Salt and peppers or shrimp. This is just for fun, huh? Obviously, it's not necessary for a sriracha salad, but it's just for fun. We're gonna cook some little chicken, tenderloin, little shrimp. We're gonna make a beautiful plate, huh? All right, friends. Let me make sure my croutons are good. How are they doing in there, guys? Everybody's doing good? Okay, I'm talking to the crouton. Yeah. Okay, they can stay in there a little bit longer. The other day, I got a comment from one of you guys saying, the other day, it was talking to the food processor. It said, I do that every day. I talk to my food processor. So don't feel bad. I talk to my appliances on a daily basis. I'm having a conversation with them. All right, so how we doing here, friends? We're looking good, I think. Did I forget anything? Let me know if I forgot something, okay? I think we're looking good. We're a little thick. So I'm gonna put just a little more lemon juice. One seed came out. That'll be for me. We're gonna put this chicken, 10 little pieces of chicken right there. I like to saute them separately. We certainly could have went down in the same pan. The shrimps are done. Boom, we're gonna turn them off. They are done. We're gonna put them on the plate. The chicken are gonna be done in a minute. I was getting myself a spoon so I can test. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, baby. This is delicious. Let me get a clean plate here. Here we go. Shrimps are done. Yeah. Are they done? Yeah, they're done. I don't like transparent shrimp. They're done, they don't have to be boiling hot anyway for me to serve them. Chicken is done. All right, my friends. Let me just put this aside. Here we are. All right. Let's slow that down. Let's turn that off. Let me take the croutons out of the oven before I really burn them. We're gonna let them rest. Whatever you do, my friends, at this point, the croutons, whatever you do at this point. You, come back. Whatever you do, don't put them in a bowl now. Do not put them in a bowl now, otherwise they're gonna get all soggy. Okay, so be careful. Don't put them in a bowl, okay? All right, so here's what we're gonna do, my friends. We've got a really important thing to do now, which is to put the salad and to mix the whole thing. So to make the presentation of my salad, I'm gonna clean up everything. I'm gonna let this cool. I'm gonna let this cool because I can't put it in the salad right now. And when it's cool, we're gonna put everything together because it's a really important thing now. We have crouton, we have Parmesan cheese, and we have lettuce. Which one do we put first, second, or third? Very important, and I'm gonna explain you the why, okay? So let me clean up all that, and I've finished the salad. Takes me about two minutes to clean up, all right? Well, friends, I got everything cleaned up, and my producer is telling me, he says, you know, that video is gonna be 30 minutes long. What am I supposed to do? There's certain stuff I gotta explain to you. Like right now, I got a problem. Two issue. First, I got too much dressing for, I got three hearts of lettuce, of romaine right there, and I cut them, and there's too much dressing. So that's an easy problem to fix, right? We take a little bit out right there, and we put it in a bowl. The other issue I got is, see, I waste time doing things. The other problem I got, it's a little too thick. Little too thick. So you could put lemon juice, or you could put vinegar, and that would thin it down, right? Except, I already got enough. So if I put more, it's gonna be too acid. So sometime, you gotta call the enemy. And the enemy is water. So every so often, you gotta call the enemy. So I put a little bit of water in there. Don't tell anybody, okay? I deny it. If you tell anybody I use water, I'll deny it. Here we go. You see, look. See what that did? That immediately thinned it down. All right, that's it. That's all it is. Just a couple of drops of water. Sometime, that's what we need. So now, three things really important. We gotta put Parmigiano-Reggiano in there, right? We gotta put Parmesan. I see a lot of people, they put the Parmesan in the dressing. Absolutely not. The first thing the lettuce should have is the dressing. Coat the salad with the dressing. Second, you put the Parmesan. Whatever is excess on the leaf, the Parmesan gonna drink and it's gonna stick to it. And it's gonna be perfect. Now, you got a texture. Instead of burying it in the dressing, you're burying the cheese in the dressing. Huh. We don't wanna do that. We wanted the texture of the cheese on the salad. Number two. Number three, you put the crouton. If you put the crouton too soon, guess what's gonna happen? The crouton gonna find the dressing and they're gonna drink it all and you're gonna have a crouton full of dressing and a salad no dressing. So you understand what I'm saying? You coat the salad first, you put the cheese second, and the crouton last. And the crouton, my friends. I should never have done that. I'm gonna make the video another 15 second too long now. Oh, put a little bit of salad right there, my friends. You take it, you don't put nothing until you coat the salad, all the leaves before. You don't put the cheese until all of the leaves have been covered. Okay? How much dressing you put in, it's really up to you. I like a nice amount of dressing. This salad is the dressing, okay? It's not about anything but the dressing, okay? So it looks good, right? Now we put the cheese. Parmigiano-Reggiano. If you're gonna put Parmesan, it's gotta be a Reggiano. Okay, the stuff in the green box. I don't know. I don't know about that stuff in that green box. A little more. You see what's gonna happen? You're gonna love this because the cheese is gonna disappear. You see the cheese now is on the leaves, making friends and sticking on the leaves now because it's got something to stick. So now every bite, you're gonna have a beautiful, look at the texture on this thing, right? Now you take your crouton. And by the way, remember, friends, with a crouton, don't put them in a bowl. Look at this. Now the crouton are gonna drink whatever's left over for them. And that's all they get. They get the leftovers. The crouton get the leftover dressing. You see the whole, there's a reason for everything we do. And now you know. Okay, so that's it, friends. This right there, I promise you, this is gonna be an amazing Caesar salad, my friends. All we're gonna do now is we're gonna take it right there. We're gonna put it in a beautiful, I love those big salad bowl. Big salad bowl right there. Look at this. That looks beautiful, right? I'm gonna take it. I'm gonna move the bowl. I'm gonna put it right here, right? We make it a little bit more. Right there, my friends. Then what I'm gonna do, since normally you just do it with one, or it's chicken, or it's shrimp. Oh yeah, why not? You know, if you can have both, then by all means, my friends, have both. There's nothing wrong with it. Somebody's gonna say, you know what, I like Caesar salad, but I don't know about the shrimp and the thingy there. They get a little confusing sometimes, you know. There you go, put it right there. And you know one thing we do now? Now we take the Parmigiano-Reggiano, right there, my friends, and we just pour it a little bit right there. And let me tell you right here, friends, if this is not an amazing Caesar salad, then I don't know what is. My friends, don't go anywhere. The cool part of it is, this is a salad I am not gonna burn myself. Mm, mm, mm. I was gonna grab this towel right there. Mm, mm. I love my life. I love my job. I love you guys. Thank you for watching. Don't forget, subscribe to the channel, ring that bell, and give me a thumbs up if you like that video. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next week for another fantastic video.