My Lazy Caesar Salad Dressing Recipe

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Call me basic but I am a sucker for a good caesar salad. I know all about how the dramatic tableside-tossed caesar salad spectacle was invented in Mexico but to me, the best caesar salads are the ones that are served up at nice pizza spots—they have to be good so that people actually enjoy eating them instead of just ordering them out of obligation to have something leafy and green to go with their pizza. I love the ones where a nice, thick, anchovy-based dressing is evenly coating every lettuce leaf before being dusted in freshly grated parmesan cheese, and I actually look forward to them just as much as I look forward to the pizza!

The original caesar salad dressing allegedly wasn’t all that thick and didn’t even contain anchovies, but for once, I have to argue that time and adaptations have improved the recipe. So, the dressing I’m paying tribute to here is the modern version that most Americans are probably more familiar with nowadays.

The bottled caesar salad dressings from the grocery store just don’t cut it for me, though. They just don’t have the same special umami. So, I always make my own. But keep in mind that I am really quite lazy. Salads are a go-to for weekday lunches at my place but in those instances I am most definitely not busting out a mortar and pestle for pounding an anchovy paste nor any sort of food processor/immersion blender to make a thick emulsion, nor do I wish to clean any of those instruments thereafter. So, this is my lazy cheater version of a caesar salad dressing that I am willing to throw together on weekdays, and I finally really tried to get the measurements right so I could share it with you.

The secret ingredient in my cheater caesar dressing recipes is fish sauce. It’s my secret ingredient in a lot of recipes, really, but I don’t think it could be any more fitting than in this one. After all, caesar dressing gets its distinct umami undercurrent from salted anchovies getting turned into a paste—fish sauce is exactly that same flavor in convenient bottled liquid form! I thought I was pretty dang clever when I first came up with this hack.

Rather than having to worry about combining egg and oil just right to create a thick emulsion, my other cheat is to use yogurt to get a nice thick dressing. Some recipes use a jarred mayo, but yogurt is perhaps a bit healthier (and less off-putting for mayo haters like my spouse). I always have some Greek yogurt in my fridge, and including it in any dressing guarantees a nice creamy and thick consistency. The resulting dressing does not taste identical to the kind I love at nice pizza joints but rather like a good yogurty version of it. For quick weekday lunches, it does the trick and is plenty tasty!

To make the salad shown in the photos, I tossed baby gems lettuce leaves with enough dressing to thinly and evenly coat the leaves and then tossed the dressed leaves with lots and lots of freshly grated parm. I made crispy prosciutto by baking twisted up slices of prosciutto on a parchment-lined tray at 425°F for 10 minutes. Then, I made grilled cheese sandwich with a cheddar and gruyere blend and cut it up into 1-inch cubes to use as croutons. A sprinkle of chopped chives and more grated parm were the finishing touches.

How I Make My Lazy Caesar Salad Dressing

Ingredients

2 cloves garlic, pressed or microplaned
3 tbsp lemon juice (from about 1 lemon)
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp fish sauce
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp Greek yogurt
1 tsp dijon mustard
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
freshly cracked black pepper, to taste
1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese

Procedure

Combine the garlic, lemon juice, vinegar, fish sauce, yogurt, and mustard in a bowl. Whisk thoroughly to combine. Add the olive oil and pepper and whisk again until homogenous. Finally, add the parmesan cheese and whisk thoroughly once again.

(This recipe makes enough dressing for 4–6 two-person meal salads. Add dressing to prepared lettuce leaves one tablespoon at a time and toss thoroughly after each addition until leaves are evenly and thinly coated. Then toss dressed leaves with extra freshly grated parmesan to taste. Serve with chunky croutons on top, or go crazy and add whatever you like!)

Recipe: My 90-Second Chocolate Mug Cake

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My disclaimer (or testament) for this recipe is that I don’t like chocolate cake—most of the time. But like any breathing human, I do get a craving for them now and again. In times like those, it can perhaps be argued that the taste of instant gratification is the sweetest of them all. I sometimes wonder if the reason I like mug cakes so much has less to do with the quality of the cake and more to do with my fascination for the microwave’s awesome and terrifying power to transform basic pantry ingredients into the semblance of a baked confection in 90 seconds.

And yet my spouse—a professed great lover of chocolate cakes—can attest that this chocolate cake sure does tick a lot of the boxes: moist, fudgy, not too cloyingly sweet, yummy. The things I’d want in a chocolate cake, somehow achievable in a mug in less than 3 minutes if you include the time it takes for me to dig the ingredients out. I’m not trying to win any pâtisserie awards any time soon, but I am trying to win over my spouse’s heart (again) and perhaps yours, too.

Some things to note about this recipe:

• Trust me on the amount of sugar. It seems like a lot for such a small amount of other ingredients, but I tried it a few times with less sugar and it just didn’t taste right. I hate overly sweet things, and this doesn’t turn out overly sweet. I’d say it turns out more like an Asian style dessert, that strives to not be cloying or sugary tasting.

• Use a big mug. The mixture will puff up in the microwave and you don’t want spillage.

• The images with the stenciled sugar were done with the ‘gram in mind. I didn’t do the last step of adding extra chocolate chunks, and instead, I dusted powdered sugar on top. Here is a photo of what the mug cake will look like if you follow my usual recipe, as presented below:

If you want to make the powdered sugar version, skip the step about adding chocolate chunks on top, and just microwave the cake batter for the full 90 seconds. I used a laser-cut wood snowflake ornament from Cost Plus World Market as a stencil. I placed the ornament on top of the cake, dusted the powdered sugar through a fine mesh sieve, and then carefully lifted off the ornament.

This recipe was adapted from a recipe by user safinabakes1231 on Allrecipes.

One last stray comment, for those who got lured here from my Instagram post—yes, the green on the mugs in those images was Photoshopped! #doitforthegram

How I Make a Chocolate Mug Cake

Ingredients

1/4 cup AP flour
scant 1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tbsp* unsweetened cocoa powder
1/8 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp table salt
4 tbsp oat milk
3 tbsp good extra virgin olive oil
~ 1 tsp date syrup
~ 1 tsp raw almond butter
a few chocolate chips, chocolate chunks, or marshmallows (optional)

(* I know, a half-tablespoon is not a very standard measurement, but just eyeball it! 2 teaspoons (2/3 tablespoon) would be too much though.)

Procedure

Add flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt to a large microwave-safe mug and whisk to combine.

Stir in oat milk and olive oil.

Add date syrup and almond butter to the top of the cake batter and use a butter knife or toothpick to create a marbled swirl on the top (this sometimes turns out pretty after cooking, and other times it gets lost, but I do it every time).

Microwave mug for 1 minute.

Add chocolate or marshmallows on top, if desired. Microwave for 30 more seconds. Allow to cool a bit (if you can wait!) before eating out of the mug with a spoon. (Would be amazing with vanilla ice cream!)