We serve steak often. If it’s just the wife and I’ll through together a little Cesar salad to go with them. If we’re having guests I make my everything but the kitchen sink salad. It has lettuce, spinach leaves, very thinly slices yellow bell pepper and red onion, grape tomatoes, pepperoncini peppers, and kalamata olives. It’s a really good salad. I will slip it in the freezer for a short stay and serve it very cold. There’ll be several dressings to choose from. What is your go to salad?
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I'm with you on the Caesar with steak just seems the perfect combo to me. My favourite salad would have to be Greek Salad something about Feta cheese and Olives does it for me. -
Caesar salad a lot! It’s BFs favorite. Grilling a half romaine takes it to a whole other level.
We also enjoy a super loaded wedge salad, too.Comment
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I make us a salad at least once a week, in fact we had salads for dinner yesterday! It’s an easy way to make a meal that I can personalize, make each the way we each like it. Mine is also a “kitchen sink” salad; I call it a garbage salad.
Lettuce: both leaf and iceberg. Mary Joan is going on warfarin next week, no more leaf lettuce for her after Monday. No spinach for me: kidney stones and gout.
Cucumber, shredded carrot, garbanzo beans, artichoke hearts, black olives, diced green and red pepper, shredded cheese, hard boiled egg, either chopped bacon or diced ham. Sometimes I cube in some fresh mozzarella. Croutons, if we have them. Sometimes I’ll use jarred roasted red pepper instead of red bell pepper.
Tomatoes and onion (either scallions or shallots or red onion) for mine; she can’t have those. Dried cranberries and candied walnuts (or the like) on hers; I’m indifferent to those, so I leave them off mine and give her more. I’d put pepperoncinis on mine if we have them, but we usually don’t.
She likes Marie’s ranch dressing, or Olive Garden creamy Italian. Both are actually decent, IMO, but I make a simple vinaigrette for myself. Sometimes I add some blue cheese for me. I’ll leave the shredded cheese and cubed fresh mozzarella off my own if I’m using the blue.
The most important things, to me, are mixing sizes, colors, and textures, along with salt/fat/acid. (Not so much heat. I mean, c’mon, it’s a salad.) After that, there’s the possibility of eating all the lettuce out, and leaving several forkfuls of toppings drenched in dressing at the very end. This is actually a feature and a benefit of the garbage salad, not a failure.Comment
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I believe my kidney stones were from drinking too much strong tea combined with a lot of almonds. I have cut back on those and hoping for the best (never had them till I started drinking tea every morning (and I alawys leave the bag in the cup), and coincidentally started eating nuts as a "healthy snack". Deifnitey not spinach as other then occasionally in a salad I detest the stuff. Fingers crossed. Your mileage may vary, of course.
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Caesar salad is a regular for us. I was also going to mention the grilled romaine. For the grilled romaine I slice the romaine in half lengthwise, drizzle with a bit of olive oil, grill cut side down until it is lightly charred. Then to serve I drizzle balsamic vinegar, a bit of salt and pepper, and some feta cheese crumbles on the halves. Delicious!Comment
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Oh oh oh…. I forgot a simply dressed arugula salad. Season the arugula with s&p, toss with really good olive oil (this is where I splurge), drizzle with balsamic and then shave some pecorino Romano across. Yum!
and I make this “Mexican” salad I learned from a restaurant job. Chopped romaine, tomatoes, kidney beans (drained), avocado, grilled chicken, jalapeño ranch. Toss with tortilla chips and top with grilled scallions.Comment
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I have a delicious pizza cart about a block from home and I just realized they sell a killer Caesar salad for cheap. Since it's so close, I now frequently pick up a salad to go with the meal I'm cooking.Comment
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Caesar is great but with a fine steak it is always a Wedge Salad for me.Comment
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I love salad, Caesar is my all time fav. I make it about once a week, usually with sliced roasted chicken. I live in an area with heavy Greek population nearby, and they make a fantastic Greek salad with a scoop of potato salad embedded in the middle, love that. My guilty pleasure I got from my dad, any kind of salad with Marie's Italian Garlic dressing, I could eat that stuff with a spoon, like soup.Comment
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we eat a spinach salad just about every night. Usually with just carrots and tomatoes added in. When we have company or sometimes we just jazz it up for ourselves with bacon, avocado, red onion…. or whatever else we can find in the fridge. 😁Comment
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Iceberg lettuce, tomato, cucumber, radish, sweet yellow onion, and shredded fiesta cheese. Usually covered with a Ken's Steakhouse dressing of some kind. Simple, because I have simple tastes. Starts almost every dinner meal I prepare.
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A Russet potato...Comment
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I buy that super greens mix and add grape tomatoes, toasted pecans, cheese cubes (fontina, havarti or something like that), strawberries, and sometimes a cubed boiled egg, salt, pepper. Sometimes I add chicken to it. Ken's Ranch.
I like sunflower seeds too. We have pedestrian taste in most things. Including salad.
I do like a wedge salad, but never make it. 🤷♀️Comment
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And here’s another salad from a former restaurant job. Chopped romaine tossed blue cheese dressing. Top with crumbled hard boiled egg and almond slivers. Trust me, it works! And a couple of turns of fresh cracked pepper to finish.Comment
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I do think that Ceasar really is optimal for pairing with beef. The sour/salty punch makes it stand up to the beef flavor IMHO.
For a green salad I tend to go with dressings heavy on the vinegar, probably for the same reason.
Years ago I used to make my own herb vinegar to sell at the farm stand. The recipe I used called for boiling down the vinegar to 50% volume. (I used, IIRC 1/3 wine vinegar and 2/3 white vinegar). I would bottle the hot liquid with a sprig of herbs and half a clove of garlic in a 8 ounce bottle). This herb vinegar made a useful topping on it's own (especially if you are avoiding salt sour can be very useful that way).
And of course it could be mixed with some other vinegar or lemon juice as desired for recipes. If I ever start an herb garden again I will definitely make this again as a great all purpose product. Tarragon was my favorite, but thyme and rosemary were quite good too. I can't recall if I ever made basil - the sprig of basic would probably look pretty bad in the bottle.
As a name-dropping aside, my Grandmother was a college chum of Katherine Hepburn. My Grandfather was a gourmet chef. He like salad dressing heavy on oil (and garlic) and very light on vinegar. After he died, I prepared salad dressing for a meal with Kate (as my Grandmother called her) and she complemented me on my dressing (which used the herb vinegar and was thus quite vinegary). My culinary brush with greatness.
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