Classic Homemade Caesar Salad Recipe

- If you're anything like me and are a big Caesar salad fan, then I'm gonna show you how to make an amazing homemade recipe. We're talking homemade croutons, homemade dressing. I'm gonna show you how to coat every single leaf of romaine in the dressing. It's gonna be absolutely amazing. And I know you will love it. I get it, how hard is it to jack up a salad. But you wouldn't believe how many people can't get it right. I'm gonna show you the best classic Caesar salad recipe that I know how to make, beginning with making our croutons. Sound good? Let's cook. I've got a French baguette. You could absolutely use regular French bread, Italian bread, or any of my bread recipes that I have. Heck, you could even use Wonder bread if you want. But I'm gonna start by slicing it in half longways and then slicing it in half widthwise. The reason I'm making such small pieces is because I believe they should be bite-size. Croutons should not be overly large. When eating them in a salad you should be able to get plenty of lettuce, cheese, and crouton on the same fork and put it in your mouth at the same time. So once they are to those nice small bite-size pieces we're gonna add them to a bowl. We're next gonna season with some sea salt, fresh cracked black pepper. And then we're gonna drizzle on a little bit of extra virgin olive oil. This is gonna add some nice fat, some nice flavor. You could use unsalted butter as well if you'd like. And of course I'm keeping it simple. You could add things like garlic powder, onion powder, totally up to you. Now go ahead and mix everything together until it is completely combined. We're gonna spread it out on a sheet tray lined with parchment paper. Now, it is important here that you want them to be completely spread out, all over the pan. You're not trying to steam these croutons, you're trying to get a really nice brown roast on them. So once they are spread out, what we're gonna do next here is we're heading straight over to an oven that's been preheated to 375 degrees. It's gonna take in between 15 to 20 minutes, or until golden brown, and nice and crunchy. Now that those are in the oven, we are gonna make a very classic homemade Caesar salad dressing. We're gonna start by adding a few anchovy filets right to a food processor. Next I've got a few garlic cloves, I'm gonna use two. A lot of recipes call one, well I like garlic, so I'm adding two. Now put the top to the food processor on. And what we wanna do is pulse it maybe 30 to 40 times. We just wanna roughly chop up the garlic and the anchovies. Let's go ahead and take a look. This is absolutely perfect. There's really no way around it. If you wanna make this recipe as classic as possible, you are going to need anchovies. If you don't wanna put anchovies in there you can do without, it is okay. What I like to do is make this salad, because my family is gonna flip if I told them ahead of time I had anchovies, so I usually tell them when they're done eating it. Now what we're gonna do is add a few pasteurized eggs right to the roughly chopped anchovies and garlic in the food processor. We're next gonna squeeze on a half lemon. I like to hold my other hand in there like always, just to collect any of those seeds from falling in, and let the juice run through the cracks in my fingers. Now I'm gonna put the top back on and we are gonna pulse this again on high speed until it becomes nice and blended and smooth. Now before we get to that next step I wanna say this, if you don't have a food processor it's okay, you can absolutely whisk this by hand. And if you are, to help keep that dressing emulsified, my recommendation is to add in one and a half teaspoons of Dijon mustard, that will totally help. Now let's process. Go ahead and add in some olive oil very slow. And it will become emulsified. It will become nice and thick. You can see how it coats the side of the food processor, and you can even see how thick it is here when I take it off, that's absolutely perfect. To also gauge the thickness I like to coat the back of a spoon. While this is more applied to the cooking process of nape, you can see how it coats the spoon perfectly even after I run my finger through it. This is excellent. But for some more flavor we're gonna hit it with some fresh grated Parmesan cheese. We're also gonna squeeze on the other half of that lemon. Again, use your hands to catch any seeds from falling in there. Now season it well with sea salt. We're gonna add the top on. And all we're looking to do here is to pulse it until it is combined. Let's go ahead and have a look and see where we're at. This looks absolutely fantastic. Now we're gonna add it right to the refrigerator. And this should be perfect timing because our croutons are done. So let's go ahead and take them out of the oven and have a look, perfectly golden brown. And be sure to try one because they're super good and nice and crunchy. We are rounding third base because we are gonna start on a romaine salad. But I wanna stop and say this because you're probably like, dude, you got raw eggs in there. First, they are pasteurized, like you heard me say. Pasteurized is this process of heating the eggs up until they're 140 degrees, since yolks start to cook at 140 they stop right there. Then they immediately cool them and chill them. And they say they're safe to eat at this point, raw, if you'd like. Also, think about this, I use lemon juice in there, I use salt. The same two ingredients that would be used to make ceviche, which is cooked fish using the acid and the salt. Acid from lemon juice, salt from obviously salt. So feel a little bit better about this dressing. Now for the romaine. I've got a few heads of beautiful fresh romaine. The first thing I like to do though, is I like to pick off the top of the romaine. Sometimes they've got a little brown and discoloration on the top of the leaf. I just simply remove it or remove any old wilted looking leaves from the outside. Once that is completed, now it's time to chop it up into nice bite-sized pieces. So slice the romaine in half. And then what I like to do is take two more slices into that half, one on the right side one on the left side. So it's kind of divided into thirds. And then I cut it into bite-size pieces. Maybe one to one and half inches big. As you can see here at the bottom that's the core, do not go into that, it's incredibly bitter and kinda gross. The other way to do it is by tearing the leaves off by hand. They say this is better because it will stop browning and discoloration, because when you tear it it's ripping right where the natural veins are in that romaine lettuce. Either way, totally up to you. Add it to a nice colander. And we are heading right over to a sink. And then I'm just gonna clean it and hose it off using some cold water. We wanna make sure we get any unwanted dirt or any just mess or muck off of the fresh romaine leaves. Once they look clean let's give it a nice shake, get as much water off as possible. I'm heading right over to a large flour sack towel. I think John Ritz makes this. And spread the romaine lettuce all over. And then fold up each of the sides. And I'm going to sort of rub it down and get as much water off as possible. This is a great option if you don't have a salad spinner. It looks nice, and I don't know, it just does the job for exactly what I need it to do. And while this is drying off, I'm also just gonna shave some fresh Parmesan cheese. I've got just a little peeler. If you have a cheese grater that does this, fantastic. I feel like peeling works excellently. That's to get those big chunks of Parmesan into our salad just like you would find at a restaurant. This looks perfect. Now let's go ahead and make our salad. So in a very large bowl grab a nice couple of handfuls of that fresh clean romaine. Hit it with some croutons. We're gonna add on a good amount of that shredded Parmesan cheese. We're of course gonna season it well with sea salt and cracked black pepper. You should do this with all of your salad. Now to make sure every leaf of lettuce gets coated you actually want to dress the outside of the bowl. Think about it, when you just dump dressing in the center on the lettuce you're trying to pull dressing from that leaf to coat all of the other leaves. This is the best way. Coat the outside. And then when you move the salad around using tongs you're actually getting dressing from the side of the bowl. It's constantly moving around and every leaf, my friend, I promise you, will be perfectly coated. Use this method for making all salads. And I can never say it enough. Comies, you under... (throat clearing) And I can't say it enough. Comies, once you start understanding these fundamental cooking techniques and putting 'em into practice, like making a homemade emulsified salad dressing, learning how to dress each leaf by dressing the outside of the bowl, it will be amazing. When you start putting these into your everyday cooking so all of your homemade food from scratch will always taste better, better than the restaurants, better than the stores, you name it. It's just gonna be more amazing. And you know this. So let's plate up in slow-mo. I'm of course gonna serve this up in a nice large bowl, this is big enough for two people. You could definitely serve it up on a plate. And obviously, I've seen people put anchovies on the top, tons of other stuff, even hard boiled eggs. I'm gonna finish it with a little more Parmesan cheese. And of course, some fresh cracked black pepper. Because well, that would be really classic. And pepper with salads, gosh does it go so well together. And man oh man, check out this beauty. (dynamic music) I always say... (throat clearing) I always say the simplest things are oftentimes the best. And the same applies to this very classic Caesar salad. It's amazing, and you need to get on it ASAP. Be sure to like this video, subscribe to my channel. And check out this video 'cause it is super good. I'll see you on there. (dynamic music)