Making Caesar Salad from scratch isn’t as complicated as you may think and your efforts will be highly rewarded with a totally enchanting experience.

I’ve often been told that I make a pretty wicked Caesar Salad. In fact, I’ve been told many times that I make the absolute best Caesar Salad this side of the continent. At the risk of sounding a tad pompous, I must admit that I tend to agree with these declarations.

Caesar Salad would be one of life’s most well-known guilty pleasures, but sadly, it gets deeply mistreated more often than none…

I don’t know about where you live, but in my part of the world, for most people, and even restaurants, Caesar Salad consists of Romaine lettuce, covered-up in store-bought dressing and then topped with dry and crumbly boxed croutons, artificial bacon bits (the very thought of these abominations makes me want to gag) and then sprinkled liberally with the shake-able white stuff that’s trying to pass as Parmesan cheese.

And most people do it that way because they simply don’t know any better… they think that one simply CANNOT make Caesar Salad entirely from scratch, or that it’s an extremely lengthy and complicated process if it can be done at all.

If you plead guilty to that, then by all means, you must read on.

Caesar Salad can be a total enchantment to the taste buds, when made right. I’m not going to lie, it demands a little bit of time and preparation, but your efforts will be mightily rewarded, believe you me.

I’m telling you, once you’ve had a taste of this Caesar Salad made entirely from scratch, you’re never gonna want to have it any other way.

And you’re gonna want to be serving it every chance you get!

A few tings you should know before you begin…

First and foremost, Caesar salad must imperatively be assembled at the last possible minute. You could make the dressing in advance (in fact, it will keep in the fridge for a couple of weeks) and you could potentially make the croutons ahead of time, too, although they truly are at their best when they’re fresh out of the pan.

Secondly, if you want to make your Caesar dressing ultra creamy like the one I made, you will need to use the following equipment:

• An immersion blender. This is the magic tool that will make the emulsion happen, so that your dressing becomes really thick and creamy. If you use a regular blender, your dressing will always remain somewhat thin and pourable.
• A TALL AND NARROW JAR with an opening that’s just wide enough to accommodate the head of your stick blender. The tight fit is mandatory for the suctioning vortex effect to take place. These 500ml (one pint) wide mouth Mason are perfect for the task: you can use them to both make AND store the dressing, IF you don’t use it all in the salad, that is…

Last but not least, don’t ever use full flavor extra-virgin olive oil. Not only is its flavor way too strong for this use, but it also seems to intensify when emulsified, which is totally not a good thing. Trust me, it will completely ruin your precious dressing. Stick with extra light tasting olive oil or avocado oil.

Got all this? You ready? Let’s get started!

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Step-by-step instructions & pictures

Creamy Caesar Salad Dressing

First, gather all the ingredients that you need to make the dressing:

• 1 large egg
• the juice of 1 lemon
• 3 cloves garlic, peeled
• 4 anchovy fillets
• 1 tbsp oil from anchovies
• 1 tbsp Dijon mustard
• 1 tbsp capers
• 1 tbsp caper brine
• 1/2 tsp salt (I use Himalayan salt)
• 1/4 tsp ground white pepper
• 1/2 cup (60ml) extra light tasting olive oil or avocado oil
• 1/4 cup (20g | 0.7oz) grated Parmesan cheese

Next, add all the ingredients, except for the oil, into your glass jar.

Remember, you want to use a jar that’s barely wide enough to accommodate the head of your stick blender, such as a 500ml (1 pint) wide mouth Mason type jar.

As you can see, there’s no need to chop or prep anything, the blender will take care of it all for you.

Well, except for maybe the Parmesan cheese. I don’t recommend throwing a whole block in there. That, you may want to grate!

Once all the ingredients have been added to the jar, pour the oil right in.

Again, about the oil: it’s VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU USE EXTRA LIGHT TASTING OLIVE OIL and NOT full flavor. The latter is way too strong and its flavor seems to intensify in the emulsification process.

As an alternative, you could use avocado oil, which also happens to be a very good quality oil (my personal favorite, in fact) that has a very mild and neutral flavor.

See how the head of my blender is about the same size as my jar’s opening? This is the kind of fit you’re looking for.

Now stick your immersion blender all the way down, ensuring that it makes full contact with the bottom of the jar.

Press the power button and very slowly lift the blender all the way to the top, keeping it as straight as you can as you move it up, until your dressing is fully emulsified and turns a beautiful shade of creamy white.

Once that’s happened, you can move the blender around and up and down to make sure that you get every last bit of oil mixed in.

And that’s pretty much how it goes in real time… pretty cool, eh?

I could watch that all day…

And that’s your finished Caesar salad dressing. Thick and creamy enough for you?

At this point, you could just put the lid on and throw that baby in the fridge, where it would keep for a couple of weeks. Or well, until you’re ready to put your Caesar salad together…

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Putting the Caesar Salad together

Now time to make the croutons: to do that, you will need to first cook the bacon in a large skillet set over medium heat, until it’s nice and crispy.

Once the bacon is cooked to your liking, remove it to a plate but leave the fat in the pan. Yes, that’s ALL of it…

Add the cubed bread to the skillet.

Here you could use pretty much any bread you want, but I find slightly stale bread works best. My favorite bread to use is a 2 day old French baguette.

If you don’t have time to let your bread age, just make sure that you pick a bread that’s fairly dense and that has a nice substantial crust to it.

Cook the diced bread in the bacon fat, tossing the cubes around from time to time, until the croutons are nice and golden brown on all sides and all that tasty bacon fat has been absorbed.

As soon as they’re ready, transfer the warm croutons to a bowl to prevent overcooking.

Like I said earlier, the croutons will keep for a little while, so you could very well make them a bit ahead of time if you had to. But really, take my word for it: if you can afford to make them at the last possible minute, you totally should. There’s nothing quite like a warm, soft and crunchy crouton that lets out slight amounts of tasty bacon drippings into your mouth as you bite into it…

Totally addictive, is what they are. Whatever you do, if you don’t use them right away, put them somewhere out of sight, else there won’t be any left to go in your salad!

When you are ready to serve, make sure you have everything handy:

• 3 hearts of Romaine lettuce (core removed)
• Crispy bacon pieces
• Croutons
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese (plus a few shavings, if desired)
• 3 anchovy fillets (chopped)
• 1 tbsp capers

Tear the romaine lettuce into bite size pieces and place it into a large salad bowl and then pour the dressing all over that lettuce.

Feel free to use as little or as much dressing as you like. Personally, I always use the whole batch. I like my Caesar salad with lots of dressing! 

Toss delicately until the lettuce is completely covered in that beautiful, creamy dressing.

Finally, top the salad with the warm croutons, crispy bacon bits, shredded Parmesan cheese (I added a few shavings, too, why not? They look so pretty!) chopped anchovies and capers.

And now, serve without delay, for this salad does not keep well at all. It DEMANDS to be eaten the moment that it is dressed.

Hey, Caesar waits for no one!