You can make an extremely satisfying, dinner-sized chicken caesar salad by simply roasting the
chicken on top of bread — the bread becomes the croutons. Chicken fat croutons! Get yourself
any kind of baking tray.
For four meal-size portions, I'd say at least a pound and a half, 700g of skin-on, bone-in
dark meat chicken pieces. Thighs are my preference, but you could use legs. I'll show you what
those would look like.
I would not attempt to do this with breast meat. White meat would turn to chalk with
this method. Enough olive oil to coat, a ton of salt (we're seasoning more than just the
chicken here), and a ton of pepper. I like some dried sage on roast chicken too, and
only because I'm already gonna be using it in the dressing I might as well grate in the
zest of this lemon I have.
Toss to get everything really well-coated, and then bread — like, half a pound of any
bread, 225g. This is stale leftover bread which is of course what croutons were originally
invented to utilize, and I have torn it into a couple big, flat boats, upon which will
sail my chicken pieces. I'm trying to get the bread as covered with chicken as possible.
And the chicken pieces are skin-side up — that's important. My oven is already hot — 350
F, 180 C, convection if you've got it. The skin will keep the meat from drying out, and
the chicken will keep the bread from burning, so you can just leave that in there for like
an hour and a half.
This is easy, but it's not quick. Halfway through, you might move the pieces around,
just if you've got some bread that isn't covered in chicken. You don't want that to burn, so
move the chicken on top. And I just want to roast this meat until I can pull it apart
like barbecue, which of course only dark meat does.
Now I guess I can just chill, because I'm not making the dressing. My friend Ben is.
This is Benjamin Ahr Harrison's famous caesar dressing that he talked about recently on
his hugely popular Star Trek rewatch podcast. It's called The Greatest Generation. You should
subscribe. I write the music for them. It's super goofy.
"Captain Kathryn Janeway of the U.S.S. Voyager..."
"Welcome to The Greatest Generation..."
Very simple, this dressing is. He's got a couple big garlic cloves. If you know anything
about eating raw garlic, you know that's gonna be a lot. Ben doesn't use the traditional
mustard, so the garlic is the pungency. A big squeeze of mayonnaise — that's in place
of the traditional raw egg, which skeezes a lot of people out.
Please don't be skeezed out by the two anchovy fillets. I swear, this dressing will not taste
fishy, especially not with the juice of this lemon. Check Ben rolling it to bust up some
of its internal structure, thus making it easier to squeeze. That's a big lemon, even
though it doesn't look like it because Ben is a big man with big hands. With a smaller
lemon I'd use the whole thing. He's using half.
Maybe twice as much olive oil as he has lemon juice in there, and then a shot of Worcestershire
sauce. That brand is thickened with cornstarch. Your's doesn't have to be thickened. A pinch
of salt — just go easy at first, the Worcestershire and the anchovies are salty. Then a ton of
pepper.
And hit it with a stick. You could mince up the garlic and anchovies fine with a knife,
but the stick is super easy. Yes, some real science says blender blades can create bitter
flavors in extra virgin olive oil, but the effect is pretty subtle and would be easily
blown away by the extremely strong flavor of this.
"Alright dude, all done."
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My chicken is brown, it feels soft when I poke it. It's done. Dark meat you can cook
pretty much as long as you want to. Out those pieces come to a plate where they can cool
so we can pull them apart later.
I find that roasting the bread in big chunks helps keep it from overheating and developing
burned flavors. However, we now have to chop it up into whatever size croutons we like,
and then return them to the pan to crisp up a little bit more while we finish the salad.
Leave those crumbs behind — they'll only burn.
I'll taste one of those for seasoning. Needs way more salt. If you're feeling naughty,
you could drop in some butter, and back in the oven. Just remember to reach in and stir
those every now and then until they are crisp as you want them.
OK, lettuce. Caesar salad is traditionally made with romaine lettuce. If you had a big,
fresh one, that'd be enough for four dinners. This is a small not-terribly-fresh one, so
I bought a second. When they're not fresh, you have to discard the wilted outer leaves.
Hey, lettuce is dirty. The leaves grow up through the dirt. I prefer to tear my leaves
into bite-size pieces and then wash them. You can chop salad — people say that bruises
the leaves more. Tearing theoretically pulls them apart along their cellular walls, as
opposed to just cutting through those walls with a knife. It certainly doesn't matter
if you're doing this shortly before dinner. I just tear because it's easier to control.
Little pretty leaves like that I want to leave whole.
Into the sink, and the way I like to do this is just submerge everything in a very big
bowl, swish it around, and then lift the lettuce up and out and into a strainer. All of the
sand has settled to the bottom of the bowl. We are lifting the lettuce up and away from
it.
Dry your lettuce on a towel, but FWIW we started eating a lot more salad a few years ago once
we got a salad spinner. It's a cheap thing. It's just a centrifuge that sends the water
flying out to the outer bowl. It is so easy and effective, and dry lettuce holds dressing
so much better.
Into a big mixing bowl. And this is my little salad trick — mince up a couple shallots
pretty fine. It's not like biting into a giant slice of raw onion in a salad. You don't even
notice it, per se. It just sends this subtle, uniform fresh pungency through the leaves.
I can handle the chicken now without frying my fingers off, so first I'm pulling the skin
off. This is why I prefer thighs to legs — the skin comes off much more easily. And you don't
have to do this, but yeah, I'ma put those skins in with the croutons to get hot and
crispy.
Beautiful moist meat underneath. You pull it apart with your fingers and you can feel
around for chunks of cartilage or any slimy bits, anything don't want to eat, and obviously
you can take out the bones. I recommend big pieces of meat, because they'll break apart
some more when you toss your salad.
I like to get the chicken coated in dressing along with the veg. Salads always need less
dressing than you think because most of the volume here is just air, so be conservative.
You can always mix in more. I like my salads very lightly dressed, which works perfect
with the strong flavor of Ben's recipe here.
Big handful of that on a plate. One of those pretty little leaves from the heart. Now our
super crunchy, chicken-fried croutons. Don't be afraid to pull them from the oven when
they still have some soft juicy spots on them. Those taste good, and they get firmer as they
cool.
Some people put parmesan in caesar dressing. I'm just depositing some fresh shavings on
top. Heterogeneity!
And what would a salad be without a big crispy shard of chicken skin? I mean, duh. That's
just what salad is. It's science.
Caesar salad is such a delightfully old-fashioned thing. It was invented in the 1920s by an
Italian chef in Tijuana, and it has a delightful Roaring Twenties decadence to it. This is
surely one of the most decadent versions. Definitely not diet food, that salad. It's
just good.