These are all of the required ingredients in our recipe:
Ingredient quantities are detailed in the printable recipe card below.
Romaine Lettuce
While we appreciate the tradition of exclusively using the ribs of Romaine lettuce, we prefer eating Caesar salad with a fork.
After you cut or tear your Romaine in bite sized pieces, clean the greens by soaking them in a large bowl of water and then dry them by leaving them in a colander for about 30 minutes or spinning them in a salad spinner. You’ll want to remove as much water from the greens as possible to keep the salad from becoming too watery.
Egg
While some recipes call for homemade mayonnaise, we prefer coddling an egg by placing it in boiling water for one minute. We let it cool in an ice bath after we remove it from the boiling water.
Ideally, your egg should be room temperature. If you start with a cold egg, you can soak it in warm water for about 5 to 10 minutes. See this article from Bon Appetite for more details.
Anchovy
Since we love anchovies, we add three high-quality Spanish anchovies to our dressing. These anchovies bring big-time umami flavor to the salad.
Pro Tip
Use a fork to mash your anchovies into anchovy paste on a flat surface.
Lemon Juice
Essentially, our Caesar dressing is a lemon vinaigrette that calls for 1/4 cup of olive oil and 1 1/2 tablespoons of lemon juice. We also add garlic and Dijon mustard – see below.
Pro Tip
One lemon should give you enough juice.
Garlic
Some Caesar dressings contain an overpowering amount of roasted garlic. Our dressing does not.
We achieve a hint of garlic flavor by rubbing the garlic against the wooden salad bowl. Our goal is for the garlic flavor to be just present in the salad, not to overpower it.
Dijon Mustard
Although Cardini didn’t add mustard to his dressing, we add the condiment to ours. In our experience, a teaspoon of Dijon mustard adds remarkable zip to the finished salad.
Croutons
We typically add homemade sourdough croutons to our Caesar salads. We make them with sourdough bread that we buy at local bakeries. Sourdough bread is becoming more and more common these days. If you can’t find or bake quality sourdough bread, you can use any rustic loaf.
To make the croutons, slice or tear the bread into one inch cubes until you have about 3 cups of croutons. After you toss the cubes in a tablespoon of olive oil, bake them for about 10 to 15 minutes in a 350°F / 175°C oven.
Pro Tip
Many recipes call for up to three tablespoons of oil. However, using just one tablespoon is a fine lower calorie option.
Parmesan Cheese
We use either Parmigiano-Reggiano or Grana Padano cheese in our simple Caesar salad recipe. Since Cardini was from Northern Italy, we imagine that he preferred cheeses like Parmigiano-Reggiano and Grana Padano over Southern Italian favorites like Pecorino-Romano.
You could use Pecorino-Romano and we assume that many American Italian restaurants use it too. However be careful not to oversalt your dressing if you go that route.
Fresh Ground Pepper
Grinding a big peppermill over your Caesar salad is the best part of the Caesar salad show. We recommend grinding pepper to taste in your vinaigrette but also encourage you to grind major amounts of pepper on the salad in front of your guests.
