Am gonna try rhis method for croutons

Yes, some restaurants really ruin the concept of salad with cheese, bacon, croutons, etc. I agree they can be a little gross. And then people sometimes put a big gob of creamy dressing on them to boot...

One of my fave salads comes from a restaurant we frequented that made this off menu for our kids: arugula, thinly sliced mango, and toasted pine nuts, all tossed with lemon and EVOO. Sublime.

Salads always taste better when someone else makes them, I think.

My salads are definitely on par with restaurant offerings and I do use most of these tips. However, when making an emulsified vinaigrette you dont need mayo—just use a bit more dijon. And I use a balsamic glaze instead of molasses, as it heightens the flavors already present and adds jusr a touch of sweetness, much less than molasses. A nice local honey is also s better sub for the heavy flavor of molasses, IMO.

When I was in my bread making phase I had lots of extra and used it for croutons, they are my DOWNFALL! Seasoned with herbs and parmesan, they are a great addition to almost anything. Spiced candied pecans have been a staple on salads for decades here in the south and now you don’t see them as much. I’ll use them rarely on a holiday salad but not my own, as they add needless calories. As always, Lan Lam has great tips, recipes and (my favorite thing about ATK) great explanations why her methods work better.

The yellow alphonso mangoes are frequently available and seem to ripen more reliably than the red and green ones. I made a salad with frisee, avocado, mango, and some of this miso sesame dressing. It was terrific.

Blend together:
1/4 cup sesame oil (or toasted sesame oil)
1 Tbsp miso paste
zest & juice from 1 lime
1/2” piece fresh ginger (or more)
1 Tbsp Maple Syrup
1 Tbsp Apple Cider Vinegar

I will have to say I make good salads and we have them often at home. i do not use croutons at home. There is one restaurant that has the best pumpernickle croutons! Thats the only time i eat croutons and these are so good i could eat them as a snack! I do occasionally use candied pecans (not spiced) and dried cranberries in salad. i like a bit of parm with that combo and sometimes add chicken. I do not like vinegrettes at all so have never made them. I use only fresh veggies and as I am sensitive to some preservatives, some restaurant salads do not sit well with me. (Tina Marie)

I saw a salad recipe years ago that used croutons made from slices of pizza. I would like to try that some day.

Ooh Lisa, I'd love that salad!

According to the chef, it is not enough molasses to taste. I do have a vinaigrette recipe that is a tad suite but for something to keep on hand, i'd rather have savory. I think I will try her way just to see, though I don't mind having to shake my dressing before I use it.

I much prefer vinaigrette over creamy dressings, but I do have great recipes for blue cheese, russian and creamy caesar when requested.

I have had croutons made from little squares of polenta, sauteed until crisp on the outside.

My kids used to take these in their lunches to snack on. IMHO they are to supermarket croutons what Tate's are to supermarket cookies.

I just made a salad for our lunch with Feta cheese, walnuts, cucumbers & Roma tomato. The Feta cheese is salty...really helps the flavors. Love the "better" crouton suggestion. I always have croutons on hand!

Interesting tips! I will not be making the croutons, though... those even make it to the salad stage at my house.

My favorite dressings are vinaigrettes, and I usually make them with apple cider, red balsamic or rice vinegar, depending on the salad ingredients. A dab of mustard is enough to emulsify, imo, and I also reverse the oil/vinegar ratio (more vinegar than oil). For crunch, I add toasted walnuts or pepitas. My salads usually catch a few leftovers... quinoa, roasted or grilled vegetables, etc.

Lisa, I have a tub of miso paste in my fridge--thanks for sharing that recipe!

Toasted sesame oil is a blessing.

Just back from dinner. had a lovely simple salad of avocado, hearts of palm, tomato, red onion and microgreens, in a vinaigrette. Very satisfying and will copy at home.

“Toasted sesame oil is a blessing.”Yes it is! Also roasted walnut oil.

When I make a vinaigrette I use a small shot of ketchup as an emulsifier. I dislike the sour taste of vinegar and the ketchup adds a bit of sweet.

Interesting. There are so many vinegars, tho. Vinaigrette needs vinegar! What do you use for acid to balance the oil?nThe tomato?

Someone mentioned not using mayo, but remember that mayo is just emulsified egg, acid and oil.

I'm known for my great salads. Here's why:

I drizzle down the side of the bowl a small amount of great quality EVOO and a splash of good vinegar or squeeze of lemon. I thrown in a pinch of salt. Then I toss lightly but really well with two forks so everything gets coated. By drizzling on the inside of the bowl instead of on the greens you coat, instead of saturate, the greens.

I dress right before serving and I serve on to plates so the greens are not sitting at the bottom of the bowl absorbing dressing.

Great greens. Never more than 3 items added.

Upon occasion I use Ina's greek vinaigrette. I never have a problem with EVOO emulsifying. Use a small whisk or shake in a jar.

Did you watch the video? That was one of the tips - dress the bowl not the salad.

Apparently K didn't. I watched and learned some things-always very interested in salads and dressings! Thanks for the video.

I guess I am the odd one out. I do not like vinaigrette at all. I like honey mustard, thousand island, and ranch.

ETA: The best salad I had out was the Caesar at Nick’s, a little local place here. My picky hubby even liked it and it ”gasp” had blue cheese in it! If I had tried blue cheese st home, he would of accused me of trying to poison him.

Have you tried homemade vinaigrette? its a very broad category and if you start with excellent evoo i bet you’d find one you like

Yikes hope i didnt sound like a scold!

Mtn, I'm not Sherry, but it didn't sound like a scold to me. There are a lot of vinegars out there and a variety of pinches of this and that, so not all vinaigrettes are the same. It's my go-to dressing, but I've had some vinaigrettes I didn't care for at all.

I‘ m reminded of the stuff in a shaker growing up … yeah, no

I’m reminded of Nora Ephron’s book, Heartburn. She gives her simple vinaigrette recipe, but there was some kick element to the vinaigrette vignette — was it that she didn’t give the recipe to Carl (her ex)?

Link with lots of vinaigrette recipes. (I am not a member, but finagle ways to view pages.)

🔸 https://www.pinterest.com/pin/1759287346242451/

No, not a scold, but I just do not like vinegar or oil on my lettuce. Not homemade or bought. Evoo is for cooking not lettuce! Sorry. Fine for anyone who does.

Mtn, would you mind sharing your Blue Cheese Dressing recipe you commented about above?

Sure.

Whisk together :

1/2 cup low-fat plain yogurt

1 tablespoon milk

1/4 cup Hellman’s mayonnaise

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

1/4 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

Pinch of cayenne pepper

Buy a small wedge of Point Reyes or Maytag. Crumble 1/2 cup and fold in.

add Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Refrigerate, preferably overnight for flavors to develop

Thanks so much!

Thank you for the link. Love a good salad, over the years I enjoyed many delicious salads when dining out. Now I make most of mine at home as I developed an allergy to a preservative that some restaurants use to keep their greens crisp. I make a good salad, but do not typically buy ingredients that I will not use in full, so I do miss the variety of salads I ate in the past.

Because I make a salad for lunch most days, I rarely order a salad as a main course, e.g., for lunch, when I dine out. I'd rather order something that isn't common fare at home.

It's a warm day here and after my walk the only thing that sounded good was a salad. I thought of you all as I mixed the dressing in my empty single-serving bowl. Persian cuke, ate the whole thing, toms, arugula, kalamatas, sheep feta. Delicious and made me feel virtuous.

Love salad but cannot eat one that contains cheese, which is a problem in restaurants. Even when I order it without the cheese they include it at least half the time— in all kinds of restaurants, including some very nice ones. I guess it is not a very common request.

"There are so many vinegars, tho "

I like to use a white balsamic vinegar. The little squirt of ketchup I add doesn't take all the acid away. Ketchup is also an acid.

@Kswl that is so crazy that they can't manage leaving off cheese from a salad upon request!

I end up eating a lot of salads out at restaurants because of my limited diet (vegetarian and unfortunately gluten free). There are definitely some wonderful restaurant salads, and a lot of mediocre ones.

I've never seen the dressing the bowl technique before, but I love that for thick dressings. It makes so much sense.

I also never think season (salt) the lettuce before applying dressing, so maybe I should give that a try.

I commonly use a little dijon mustard in vinaigrettes, but I haven't seen the use of mayo before. I should give it a try just to see if I like it.

I am a big fan of mixing a few types of greens to add variety of texture and flavor. I love arugula but often find pure-arugula salads just too much. Almost too rich or something. I also find it very frustrating when restaurants list the types of greens I'll be getting in my salad only to have it come out without half of them. (This happened recently with a "kale salad" that literally had no kale in it.)

PPC, i agree 100% about mixing greens, especially with arugula and kale. i cannot eat a salad with just those singular greens.

I liked the idea of smearing the sides of a bowl with a creamy dressing also and will be trying that. I’m thinking it would work well with a pasta salad to help coat all the curly pasta I usually use.

Kswl, removing a salad ingredient seems to be common problem for even nice restaurants. DD and I don’t like raw onions and always ask for those to be omitted but they often are not, making me think the salads are sometimes prepared in advance. She also has a couple of other things she doesn’t like in main dishes and that is sometimes harder to get right.

@mtnrdredux_gw - I didn't watch the video but am glad to know that those who do will start dressing their bowls!

@Kswl - Sorry you get cheese served in your salad anyway. I always ask for mine w/o and 95% of the time it works. Maybe it helps that I'm with my husband who has a severe dairy allergy so they take it super seriously?

I'm mostly dairy free but man do I adore good quality stinky blue cheese.

There is a great series out on Netflix about famous chefs. Interesting people, lovely cinematography. I recently watched an episode about Alice Waters. She tells an anecdote about making a salad.

Alice Waters admits that in the 1970s for a Tavern on the Green dinner, she brought a whole flat of lettuce still in the earth and placed it in the plane’s overhead bin. Now that’s commitment to freshness.

"When I was invited to New York to receive an award, out of 25 chefs, I was the only woman. We each presented a dish. All of the men had fancy French dishes—ice carvings, sautéed lobster. I had brought a salad. I will never forget how self-conscious I was. I kept saying, “I borrowed the bowl from James Beard, I made the vinaigrette, and these are the kinds of lettuces.”

I often judge a fine restaurant by its green salad. The lettuces should spring back when you touch them. It should be very lightly dressed, and not hide under gop. If they can't bother to do that right, they've lost me. We have a running joke in our family, when someone mentions a restaurant in casual conversation and I say "Oh yes, we ate there once!" Only DH says he knows I mean "we ate there once, and not again."

There’s a restaurant here in town that opened in about 1978. the excellent house salad that they’ve always served is simply bibb or boston lettuce with mustard vinaigrette. But it’s tossed and nicely seasoned and everyone knows what you mean if you say C&O salad..

Thinking a little more about salads, I feel like there's a big difference between a "meal salad" and a "side salad". The former I want more -- more types of lettuces, something crunchy, something for contrast like fruit or olive or beets, and usually a robust dressing with some flavor. If I am eating something else and accompanying it with a salad, I'm happier with something more simple -- maybe only one type of greens, fewer addons, usually a more simple dressing will suffice. I think that's in part because if I'm eating a salad as a meal, I want it to really fill me up -- both physically and also my taste buds. If I'm eating a salad with something else, I want it more as an intro or maybe a palate cleanser between bites.

Totally agree.

Had a salad at the Union Square Cafe tonight. Pure perfection. Just baby butter lettuce, insanely good croutons, and dijon vinaigrette. I could eat that every day. Might add it to my list of top five favor things to eat.

My brother (former chef) made a vinaigrette a few weeks ago that was one of the best things I've ever tasted in my life. Food orgasm level of good.

Interesting video - I did learn from it, and I especially like Lan Lam - she is one of only a handful of chefs on ATK that I really like - about half of them I can't watch because of idiosyncrasies that annoy me, such as vocal rise, mispronouncing words, starting every sentence with "So", etc.

That said, I do watch ATK frequently, as it is a separate channel on my Samsung TV.

One of my favorite salads is Tuscan Kale - I haven't used arugula much lately, but I used to grow it in my back yard. I also love beet salad with Gorgonzola and toasted walnuts, although generally I do not like nuts in salads. I don't like sweet salad dressings, except for fruit salads, and I do not like anything sweet (such as raisins) in a salad unless it is a fruit salad.

I have my own vinaigrette recipe, which uses fresh herbs and aged Balsamic vinegar (as well as wine vinegar), and it stays emulsified. I make it in a blender.

I only like massaged kale.

This was very easy to make at home. Tomato, avocado, red onion, hearts of palm. I made a vinaigrette w EVOO, white wine vinegar, mustard and garlic paste. A bit of baby arugula on top.

These shallow plate-bowls are from IKEA. The owner here has several. I used something similar back at our first post-fire rental in another town, and posted about a quest for them. I think I will pick some up of these at Ikea. They show off food the way black velvet shows off diamonds.

Mtn, looks great. We have plain white bone china and the pieces we use most are the one sometimes called a dinner bowl -- more upturned rim than a coupe shape, and the rimmed soup. Before I was married, I had a small set of black glass dishes -- I loved the way the black showed off colorful dishes, especially colorful salads, stir-fries or anything with a lot of bright veggies. I bet that salad would look great on black too.

I hadn't really read this thread before now -- I disagreed with the premise. My experience isn't salads always taste better out. I would say they are hit and miss- a lot of uninspired sides and overdone entrees out there, and almost always too much dressing. If a salad has fresh ingredients, it shouldn't need a lot of dressing, IMO. I usually order the dressing on the side and rarely use half of it. Sometimes I don't use any dressing, but 95% of the time, any dressing I use will be a vinaigrette. If I make the dressing it will be with less oil than is classically proportioned. I'm definitely on the oil and mayo adverse end of the spectrum.

Someone mentioned beets. I like beets and would love to be able to get a beet salad that was actually about the beets. Usually it seems to be an excuse to eat a lot of cheese and often one I don't care for - $15 for half a sliced beet underneath. No thanks.

I prefer to eat most meals out of a shallow white bowl. I don't know if it's because it's easier to eat the items on the edges, or if it's just the self-contained-this-is-mine feeling it gives me. Probably the latter.

Mtn, at first I thought your salad was from a restaurant. It's very pretty and contains some of my standards, although I haven't had hearts of palm in decades. I usually have triple the amounts and give it a good toss before digging in.

Skipping down to comment - I do not care for dressing on any green salads any more - just a good syrupy balsamic, some salt and maybe a sprinkle of oregano. I used to grow a leaf lettuce mix from Pinetree every year and nothing beats that kind of freshness and tenderness.

Mtn, at first I thought your salad was from a restaurant.

Oh thank you! I too had forgotten all about hearts of palm.

Yes.

Ny DD made gaucamole last night. She puts onion in it. It was excellent but, she said, the onions were chopped too unevenly. I agreed and said most young cooks think that would not matter,but it does.

Funny this thread came back up because I fell asleep watching this last night. I suggest watching from 5:14 to 10:40. Note how she dresses the salad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUewR4C0I_Y

This is the recipe from the video clip.

Makes: :1½ cups

• 1large shallot, very finely diced
• 2tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon aged sherry vinegar, plus more as needed
• 1tablespoon warm water
• 1cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1½ teaspoons honey
• 1½ teaspoons Dijon mustard
• 1½ teaspoons whole-grain mustard
• 2thyme sprigs, washed leaves picked and finely chopped (about ½ teaspoon)
• 1garlic clove, finely grated
• 1teaspoon kosher salt, plus more as needed
• ½teaspoon freshly ground black pepper