The Reason Caesar Salad Tastes Better At A Restaurant Is All In The Dressing
When it comes to satisfying meals, there isn't much that beats the crisp freshness of a delicious Caesar salad. For many, it's even the salad of choice when dining out. Avid cooks will often try to recreate it at home, and in case you plan to do so, make sure to avoid these Caesar salad mistakes. Despite our best efforts, making a Caesar salad at home that tastes as good as the kind you would eat in a restaurant can be very difficult, but have you ever wondered why that is? The answer lies in the salad's dressing.
Restaurants are invested in attracting their customers back, so they take pains to create the best version of the dishes on their menus. This means using the best and freshest ingredients possible, and sometimes it means making everything from scratch, especially the dressing, which is responsible for most of the flavor.
The secret to making restaurant style dressing for Caesar salad
In order for the dressing to be truly lip-smacking good, it must be made in-house; you cannot expect the same results from store-bought salad dressing. Caesar salad dressing, in particular, needs to be just the right kind because one of the main ingredients in this type of salad is the generous serving of lettuce leaves.
These salad leaves naturally come with a protective layer that resists water. Water-based liquids like lemon juice don't adhere to the leaves and tend to slide off instead. On the other hand, oils, another essential ingredient of salad dressing, coat them and make them lose their crispy texture. The solution to this problem is to use a dressing that is a mixture of water- and oil-based ingredients so that the water can prevent the oil from making the leaves wilt. This is done best when you make a dressing that includes (but isn't necessarily limited to) these two ingredients so that the acidic elements can coat the oil and prevent it from touching the lettuce. Some examples of a good mix of ingredients would be mixing olive or avocado oil with acidic ingredients like vinegar or lemon juice.
Other tips to make restaurant style Caesar salad at home
Now that you understand the science behind the dressing, you may also be interested in learning other tricks you could employ to ensure that you recreate a truly delicious restaurant-style Caesar salad at home. The first thing to remember is to use the freshest ingredients possible because the best flavor comes from there. Another neat little secret for a tastier salad is using a cold bowl.
In some restaurants, chefs season every salad ingredient separately to add depth and layers of taste and texture, and they deliberately choose ingredients that balance each other out. So, sweet is added to temper saltiness, and a bit of tartness is added to plain flavors. In some cases, you could also add a bit of spice to some of the ingredients to really elevate the salad, as that is an unexpected element for most diners. Follow these tricks and enjoy the best possible Caesar salad from the comfort of your own home.