Salad | Basics with Babish

Hey guys, welcome back to Basics with Babish, where this week we're looking at

salad

s. An often overlooked and disliked food accompaniment. But this forage refresher can be a robust, radiant and reliable side dish or main course in itself. Let's get down to the

basics

. Well, let's start with everything we need to make one of my favorite

salad

s: panzanella. Which is a kind of Italian bread salad. So if you don't like salads, this is a great way to start because it's loaded with bread. We will start with ciabatta cut into small pieces, which we will mix with olive oil, sprinkle with freshly ground pepper, kosher salt and make sure everything is very well coated, before spreading it on a baking sheet. .

The parchment lining in this case is optional. Make sure they are all spread out, not overlapping, and placed horizontally. And toast at 450 degrees for about 5 minutes. While that's happening, let's prepare the saladier parts of our salad. We will cut an entire bunch of cherry tomatoes in half, cut a medium cucumber into small pieces, as well as half a red onion. And about half a dozen mozzarella balls. We will also cut some basil into julienne strips and put everything in a bowl and mix it well. And let those flavors be known. While we make a simple vinaigrette of: olive oil, white wine vinegar, lemon juice, Dijon mustard, a small shallot, which we are going to chop as finely as possible, and we are also going to grate a clove of garlic. .

Along with the requirement: salt and freshly ground pepper. This is a fabulous all-purpose salad dressing, if you don't use it on the panzanella salad that's okay. But it's a complete game changer if you've only used the bottled stuff. So, we're going to add our bread, which we let cool a little bit, we want it to be a little bit warm... We're losing some pieces here, so let's move on to the salads. Stop laughing, there will probably be a lot of that said in this episode! So, once you're done making the salad, it's time to get dressed.

Drizzle what seems like a visually appropriate amount of dressing over the salad awaiting you below. Give it a final shake before serving. Nowadays I love putting salads on long wide plates, I feel like it shows off all the beautiful ingredients better than a bowl. But it really depends on you. After all, you're the '80s power ballad to your tossed salad. Sorry, Chef John. For a final touch of color and flavor, we'll top with some freshly cut basil and there you have it, a Panzanella salad. One that would make even the most stubborn carnivore grunt in unabashed delight.

What if we want to make carnivorous salad? The steakhouse classic: Iceberg Wedge. This starts by browning a bunch of bacon. Do I have your attention now? Good. So let's get all of our bacon nice and crispy and drain it on paper towels. And then we have to make our dressing. Which in this case is a blue cheese dressing with buttermilk. Nobody said salad had to be healthy. We start with 3 to 4 tablespoons of buttermilk, add 1 to 2 tablespoons of sour cream, and then probably a healthy quarter cup of full-fat mayonnaise; healthy is probably the wrong word.... A generous quarter cup of full fat mayonnaise. -fat mayonnaise, along with 2 teaspoons of white wine vinegar, 1 or 2 cloves of grated garlic, salt and pepper to taste, and of course the main ingredients.

An unlimited amount of high-quality crumbled blue cheese; Try to get what comes in the block, not what is already crumbled. Mix it all together and there you have it: homemade blue cheese dressing that will literally blow away anything you've ever bought in a bottle, figuratively speaking. Now, I hate to disappoint you, but this is a salad that requires no mixing. We're simply quartering a large head of iceberg lettuce, slicing the bacon, chopping some fresh scallions, and halving some cherry tomatoes before dressing our iceberg slices. Top first with chives, so they stand out against the white dressing, then with cherry tomatoes, and of course, the only reason this salad exists: tons and tons of bacon.

There you have it: an Iceberg Wedge Salad that has enough bacon and blue cheese to make any griller blush. Next, how about a staple American classic: Caesar salad? That was actually invited in Tijuana. According to the original recipe, an egg is lightly tempered in boiling water for 3 minutes before being immersed in an ice bath. Next we are preparing our lettuce element, which in this case is romaine. Which is full of dirt. So we have to be very careful that that doesn't end up on our plate. First we will cut it into small pieces, place it in a large strainer and rinse it well.

Once you're sure you've removed all the unwanted debris from your vegetation, it's time to test it on paper towels. While continuing to break it into pieces of more appropriate size for your mouth. And now we are making our croutons. The same way we did with the panzanella oil and added the bite-sized bread of your choice. This time with the addition of some garlic powder and toast in the preheated oven until completely golden. While that's happening, it's time to make our dressing. For this we are going to need a mortar. In which we are going to crush a clove of garlic, and a few turns of freshly ground pepper.

Then we add about an ounce of freshly grated Parmesan cheese, mashed into a paste, which we're going to place in a bowl, squeeze half a lemon over the top, making sure to catch the seeds, and add 2 tablespoons of Worcestershire cheese. sauce, and 2 teaspoons of Dijon mustard, which we are going to give an initial mixer. Then, in a separate bowl, we give our cooled and separated egg yolk a little preliminary shake before adding it to the aforementioned mixture. Then we're going to slowly drizzle in half a cup of good quality extra virgin olive oil, whisking constantly, to create an emulsion and there you have it, Caesar dressing.

Now I know you're wondering 'Where are the anchovies?' Well, there were no anchovies in Caesar Cardini's original recipe. You can add one or two anchovies at the mortar preparation stage, if you wish. But for now we will stay true to the original form. In a large bowl we are dressing and then adding our salad, which we are then going to pour onto a large, wide plate. Before topping with this salad's 3 simple accessories: our delicious homemade croutons, a generous helping of Parmesan cheese, cut into curls with a vegetable peeler, and several twists of freshly ground black pepper.

And there you have it. Last but not least, the original Caesar salad. Of course, this pairs great with grilled chicken, grilled shrimp, salmon, and hard-boiled eggs; that's really one of the beauties of the salad. Once you really understand its main components, you can start adding and subtracting as you see fit to make the meal of your dreams...sort of. Thanks for watching guys, stay tuned in the near future for live streams coming to YouTube where you can cook with me live as I recreate what I did in last week's basic episode. I'll see you there. I'll bring the salad if you bring the whiskey.

Oh, those don't match well? I don't mind.