How To Craft A Caesar Salad And Not Settle For Less In Life
September 8, 2013 6:31 PM   Subscribe

"We're encouraged, foodwise, to pay attention to contrast and balance: a little bit of salt to balance out intense sweetness, a little bit of acid to balance out a lot of rich fat, a bleach-haired goober with sunglasses on the back of his head hustling Donkey Sauce-drowned garbage-food on two different cable channels every nine minutes to balance out any confidence you had that success in life accrues to the deserving, and so on." Deadspin d/b/a Foodspin teaches us that sometimes too much is just enough.
posted by Inspector.Gadget (69 comments total) 31 users marked this as a favorite
 
... and you are going to remedy this, ecstatically, with garlic.

That's pretty much what I do with my entire life. And that's totally OK.
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:40 PM on September 8, 2013 [9 favorites]


Well, I'll admit to being a little cheesed off that the article is supposed to be about doing this right, but then they stop short of making you separate eggs.
posted by ftm at 6:41 PM on September 8, 2013 [19 favorites]


I don't much want to consume that particular recipe but yes thank you I did enjoy the writing.
posted by Songdog at 6:43 PM on September 8, 2013


Having read the rest of the article, specifically his reference to "tongue-melting" garlic, his interpretation of "intense" doesn't necessarily match mine and I get the sense that he's somewhat of a wimp. That said, I'm now eagerly seeking out a real recipe for caesar salad, so there's that.
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:56 PM on September 8, 2013 [4 favorites]


Yeah, I'm sort of perplexed that a recipe that goes through the steps of making croutons and assumes you're making the dressing with a processor or blender thinks that separating eggs is too difficult or involved of a step. I wonder if there's some editorial shyness about using raw eggs going on?
posted by kagredon at 6:57 PM on September 8, 2013 [1 favorite]


OK, that was a bit aggressive and macho for a Cesar salad.

I mean, I've been burned before. I know how infuriating it can be to order a Cesar salad in a restaurant and get a plate of soggy, insipid, greasy wilted lettuce with four nasty croutons because SERIOUSLY HOW DO YOU FUCK UP A CESAR SALAD HOW DO YOU DO THAT.


But dude, you gotta chill. A Cesar salad really and truly is not ASSKICKINGMONSTERFOOD, it is a fucking salad with like four, five things in it..
posted by louche mustachio at 6:58 PM on September 8, 2013 [10 favorites]


Yeah, I'm sort of perplexed that a recipe that goes through the steps of making croutons and assumes you're making the dressing with a processor or blender thinks that separating eggs is too difficult or involved of a step. I wonder if there's some editorial shyness about using raw eggs going on?

He mentioned in the comments that there are more uses for croutons than egg whites and eggs are gross...
There's a simple calculus involved, there: there are more fun uses for croutons than for homemade emulsified egg yolks, and they're less annoying and less gross to make than emulsified egg yolks, so, uh, screw it.
I don't buy it either.
posted by device55 at 7:07 PM on September 8, 2013 [3 favorites]


I've been reading the Foodspin articles for a while. I don't agree with him on some things (he has a particular disdain for even the slightest talk of BBQ), but I like the enthusiasm he's got for it, and the discussions at the bottom of most articles are (especially for a Gawker site) generally quite good, with a lot of responses from Burneko. There's some good stuff in there.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:07 PM on September 8, 2013 [1 favorite]


Six raw garlic cloves is "tongue-melting"? Is that you, Des Moines in 1961? While you're on the line can I have your general prosperity too plz thx
posted by threeants at 7:08 PM on September 8, 2013 [22 favorites]


This looks like a recipe written by and for people who unironically think of themselves a playas.
posted by oddman at 7:08 PM on September 8, 2013 [6 favorites]


When I was a kid, there were steak houses that would make caesar salad at the table - watching them crack eggs and chop anchovies was pretty entertaining, smashing avocados for guacamole doesn't compare.
posted by betweenthebars at 7:11 PM on September 8, 2013


threeants: "Six raw garlic cloves is "tongue-melting"?"

He means whole heads, right? Thirty or forty cloves in each head? Gotta be.

(what do you mean, he means cloves? I thought this was gonna taste like something!)
posted by notsnot at 7:18 PM on September 8, 2013 [3 favorites]


Sometimes too much just enough is just enough.
posted by usonian at 7:18 PM on September 8, 2013


He forgot to mention the cocaine. I guess it's implied.
posted by Cookiebastard at 7:23 PM on September 8, 2013 [2 favorites]


...and sometimes nothin' is a real cool hand.
posted by notsnot at 7:25 PM on September 8, 2013 [1 favorite]


He forgot to mention the cocaine. I guess it's implied.

I want to see table side Caesar salad, ingredients chopped on a mirror top tray with a razor blade, while the waiter belts out, "Hip To Be Square."
posted by ryoshu at 7:29 PM on September 8, 2013 [7 favorites]


I like his piece on chili, too.

The bit on chili factionalism contains great advice for basically every argument ever:

Even among the more peaceably inclined, chili is quite possibly the single food about which men are most powerfully impelled to brag, standing beside our buddies/brothers/cousins/neighbors/random strangers whose homes we have invaded, as they stir big bubbling Dutch ovens of the stuff while we wait for opportunities to clumsily shoehorn a detailed description of our own showily elaborate recipe into the conversation. "Oh, just beef, huh?" we say with practiced nonchalance: "I make mine with ground chorizo, veal, braised spare ribs, diced Serrano ham, pheasant, lamb, and woodchuck, and I roast my own organic bell peppers and a cultivar of habaneros I bred myself over six years of selective horticulture. I call them Bobaneros. Yeah, I harvest them on the full moon and smoke them in a unique Bobanero smokehouse I built in the backyard using seasoned hickory I chopped myself. Then I age them in homemade adobo sauce for exactly 212 days. Oh, do you use white onions? Yeah, lately I've been trying hydroponic Armenian shallots. Hmm. Beans. I don't use beans, as I find them to be …" and so on.Chili invites us to tinker, to adjust, to personalize, and if the results taste good, to feel good about that. Where we go too far is the point at which our personal preferences tip over into proclamations of the correct way to make it—where "I don't like tomatoes in my chili" curdles into "Real chili doesn't contain tomatoes, you sonofabitch!"

This is because, within the very broad outline—a spicy stew featuring chili peppers as a primary flavoring ingredient—correct chili is defined as follows: It goddamn tastes good, and you didn't give yourself acute dehydration from sweating over whether you were doing it right. Like it better with tomatoes than without? Add tomatoes! Prefer green-colored chili with cilantro and green peppers? Go for it! Think it's wrong to put beans in chili? Die die die die die.

That level of vehemence is only appropriate when directed at the vociferously anti-bean crowd (he says, signing his own death-warrant in the entire state of Texas), and here's why. Beans found their way into chili as a protein-packed supplement to meat for people who, because they were poor or because they had no easy local access to meat, could not put much in their pot. Which, since chili is essentially peasant stew designed to dress up the kinds of proteins that can't just be seared and served, makes beans a perfect chili ingredient, and it makes any teeth-gnashing over their inclusion scummy elitist nonsense. Chili would probably taste just splendid with Wagyu beef, king crab, sturgeon roe, and the last goddamn panda cub in the world, but nobody takes up the pitchfork and storms his neighbor's castle for using regular humble ground chuck in chili. And anyway, beans taste good and add some welcome heft to the dish, so shut up.

(Note please that this is not the same thing as arguing that chili must contain beans. The precise point is that chili may contain beans, and that if you don't like beans you may decline to put them in yours, and that if you feel it necessary to browbeat people who put beans in their chili, you may fling yourself into a volcano and leave the world no worse off for the loss.)

Chili abides our personalization, as well as our concessions to circumstances like not being able to get our hands on as much meat as we'd like, or being morally unable to consume meat, or not particularly enjoying foods spicy enough to corrode diamonds; that's no small part of what makes it so great. All it asks of us is that we round up some chili peppers, some protein, and some liquid, and we give them time to get to know each other. Beyond that, we've got free rein to customize to our delight. Chili—the cultural institution, not the specific recipe, but sometimes that, too—is a grand monument to heterogeneity. Let's celebrate it for that, and quit with the fighting.

posted by Sebmojo at 7:32 PM on September 8, 2013 [23 favorites]


My favorite Caesar salad recipe ever, courtesy of the Surreal Gourmet: Hail Caesar Salad.
I don't know if the original recipe is still available on Salon, but I've been making it since the 90s, and it gets compliments every time.
posted by bashos_frog at 7:39 PM on September 8, 2013 [7 favorites]


> SERIOUSLY HOW DO YOU FUCK UP A CESAR SALAD HOW DO YOU DO THAT.

Well, if you're the golf course/banquet hall I worked at in high school, you give a couple of 16 year-olds the vaguest instructions possible - once - and then ask them to make like 50 of them asfastasfuckingpossible.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:42 PM on September 8, 2013 [4 favorites]


Anyone have a good vegan Caesar recipe? I putatively love the taste, but I don't eat fish, and eggs gross me out.
posted by threeants at 7:43 PM on September 8, 2013


Sebmojo, I think that's one of the bits of his that shows why he's worth reading. Yes, there's the exaggerations and interjections (the Deadspin 'let's all write like Magary' house style), but there's also some pretty good stuff in there, and he's trying to make food and cooking more accesible, which I'm always going to be a fan of.

And yeah, my chili doesn't have beans in it because I don't like beans. That doesn't make my chili any less of a religious experience, mind you.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:43 PM on September 8, 2013


I'll go against the grain here though and say that 4-6 garlic cloves sounds just about right, since it sounds like the final yield is somewhere around a cup or so of dressing. No, it won't be the "tongue-melting" that he's hyping, but it shouldn't be. It's not garlic dressing, it's Caesar, with lemon and cheese and olive oil and anchovies (yes I know the anchovies aren't traditional, but they are tasty.) The garlic should be present without overwhelming the other ingredients. Balance in all things.
posted by kagredon at 7:51 PM on September 8, 2013 [6 favorites]


(nice use of the anyonehaveamint tag, though)
posted by kagredon at 7:59 PM on September 8, 2013


Leaving the eggs out is weaksauce. I think the author knows that. This article stinks of shame.
posted by mr_roboto at 8:30 PM on September 8, 2013 [4 favorites]


Seriously. That stink is not garlic, it's shame. For presenting a Caesar salad recipe that leaves out raw eggs.
posted by mr_roboto at 8:33 PM on September 8, 2013 [4 favorites]


he has a particular disdain for even the slightest talk of BBQ

BLASPHEMY! He is now dead to me.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:42 PM on September 8, 2013 [1 favorite]


He kind of subtly slides it in there, but it really is a pretty good rule of thumb that you can safely skip any restaurant that uses "signature" as an adjective on the menus.
posted by DoctorFedora at 8:45 PM on September 8, 2013 [3 favorites]


Thanks Inspector.Gadget, I hadn't encountered Mr. Burneko before and I like the cut of his culinary jib. Common sense, practicality and irreverence all great attributes for any cook.
The 'bleach-haired goober...' reference was deliciously nasty too.
posted by islander at 9:13 PM on September 8, 2013


ryoshu: "He forgot to mention the cocaine. I guess it's implied.

I want to see table side Caesar salad, ingredients chopped on a mirror top tray with a razor blade, while the waiter belts out, "Hip To Be Square."
"

Can he wear a seethrough plastic raincoat too?
posted by Samizdata at 9:25 PM on September 8, 2013


I bet he has a menacing fucking recipe teaching you assholes how to make a goddamn grilled cheese sandwich that will blow your brains out, if you dare come near such a fiery beast, you small-genital dingbats.
posted by domnit at 9:39 PM on September 8, 2013 [5 favorites]


...he has a particular disdain for even the slightest talk of BBQ...

Ah, no he doesn't. Not in the least. He just doesn't like the pretension that surrounds the act of REAL 'MERICAN BARBEQUE. (I also find it annoying.) His first article was about grilling chicken legs.
posted by converge at 9:47 PM on September 8, 2013


But dude, you gotta chill. A Cesar salad really and truly is not ASSKICKINGMONSTERFOOD, it is a fucking salad with like four, five things in it..

I bet he has a menacing fucking recipe teaching you assholes how to make a goddamn grilled cheese sandwich that will blow your brains out, if you dare come near such a fiery beast, you small-genital dingbats.


See, now these are just making me imagine recipes for sort of ordinary, even kind of milquetoast-y recipes done up in the highly-excitable-bro-food tone

like

BRUTAL RICE PILAF

MOLDED JELLO SALAD THAT WILL KICK YOUR TASTEBUDS SO HARD, YOU'LL GO BLIND HOW DOES THAT EVEN WORK

FUCKING COFFEECAKE YEAH YOU KNOW YOU FUCKING WANT SOME OF THIS


Although, I guess WTF SHOULD I MAKE FOR DINNER kind of covered that, and judging by the Amazon preview, it carried over into the book.
posted by kagredon at 9:54 PM on September 8, 2013 [18 favorites]


Ah, no he doesn't. Not in the least. He just doesn't like the pretension that surrounds the act of REAL 'MERICAN BARBEQUE. (I also find it annoying.) His first article was about grilling chicken legs.

Goddammit, how many times do I have to explain it to you people, BARBECUE IS NOT A VERB.
posted by Rangeboy at 10:21 PM on September 8, 2013 [3 favorites]


You realize that article uses barbecue as a verb, right?
Has been barbecued—cooked for a long time at a low temperature with heat and smoke from a fire of hardwood and or hardwood coals;
Also, just because it is a noun in your dialect doesn't mean it must always be so.

Also also, my favorite Foodspin: Tubular Freezer-Pop Flavors, Ranked.
posted by Rock Steady at 10:37 PM on September 8, 2013 [2 favorites]


I was kind of reminded of Thug Kitchen, too.
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 10:43 PM on September 8, 2013 [1 favorite]


Ok, this is weird. In Australia, a Caesar salad always has bacon and eggs (usually hard boiled and quartered, but I use 62 degree eggs). It seems like the right and natural way of things.
posted by the duck by the oboe at 10:50 PM on September 8, 2013


For all its disdain for "bleach-haired goobers with sunglasses on the back of their head", this article sure sounds like it was written by one.
posted by MartinWisse at 10:58 PM on September 8, 2013 [4 favorites]


converge, that's pretty much exactly what I'm talking about. The 'REAL 'MERICAN BARBEQUE' you're mocking is pretty much exactly the thing about Burneko that bugs me.

Yes, it takes a ridiculously long time, and it (sometimes, but seriously, not always) requires specialized equipment, but the flavor is worth it. Sure, his articles are mostly aimed at people who would approach his recipes with the kind of trepidation a caveman would have for fire, but there is a pretty easy to see line between BBQ orthodoxy (and the obnoxious assholes that go with it) and the fun of figuring things out on your own, and making things that are really, truly homemade.

Aside from that, well, BBQ, as we're talking about, it pretty much is one of the few distinctly American kinds of cuisine. I'm not a flag waving redneck, but I happen to think it's perfectly okay to take pride in the food you've grown up with.

and yes, I'm well aware that BBQ didn't orignate full grown in America
posted by Ghidorah at 11:42 PM on September 8, 2013


See how bashos_frog's recipe has a single clove of garlic? That's because it's overpowering stuff when raw. More than 6 cloves would be nasty and gross (I guess you could call it "tongue-melting").
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 12:36 AM on September 9, 2013


Also also, my favorite Foodspin: Tubular Freezer-Pop Flavors, Ranked.


Oh my God. The comments. I am dying.
posted by louche mustachio at 2:34 AM on September 9, 2013 [2 favorites]


Even worse that the removal of the raw eggs is the replacing them with Mayonnaise. Mayo is the enemy of the good.
posted by .kobayashi. at 4:53 AM on September 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


You can use 6 cloves of roasted garlic instead of raw garlic, and use raw egg yolks (save the mayo for tomato sandwiches), and this recipe would be quite a bit better.

[...is it not also true that overcoming your reliance on pre-packaged corporate foodstuffs is a good thing?]

If that's true for croûtons, it's also true for the bread that the croûtons are made from. If you're going to use prepackaged bread, just go ahead and buy croûtons, it'll be OK.
posted by Cookiebastard at 5:34 AM on September 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


.kobayashi.: "Even worse that the removal of the raw eggs is the replacing them with Mayonnaise. Mayo is the enemy of the good"

So, logically, mayo is perfect?
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 5:39 AM on September 9, 2013 [7 favorites]


> He kind of subtly slides it in there, but it really is a pretty good rule of thumb that you can safely skip any restaurant that uses "signature" as an adjective on the menus.

Herewith is my own list of food-industry danger sizes. If you see any of these words, you can stop patronizing the place in good conscience:
Gourmet
Class
Classic
Signature
Authentic
Decadent
Angus
Hand-[anything: prepared, cooked, chopped, roasted,]
Individual

In general, the more the menu is padded out with adjectives*, the less likely the food is going to be good.

*There are two acceptable counters to this rule: When a restaurant specializes in unusual foods or local cuisines, it's reasonable to add descriptions to the dishes as a kind of inline FAQ to keep the same questions from being asked over and over again, keeping in mind that the guy running the place is not necessarily a good writer and will probably be taking his authorial cues for his menu from the menus of local restaurants that are successful, whether or not they're good. Alternately, if an expensive restaurant has a menu terse with language in order to fit its dozens upon dozens of appetizers, entrees, salads, soups, desserts, and so on... the cooks don't have the liberty to focus on doing a few things well and are probably pulling par-cooked and pre-prepared ingredients from the freezer to keep the prep line down.
posted by ardgedee at 5:43 AM on September 9, 2013


If that's true for croûtons, it's also true for the bread that the croûtons are made from.

By that logic, if you were going to use pre-milled wheat flour to make bread from which you'd later make croutons, you might as well just buy pre-made croutons. And don't even think about using wheat you didn't grow yourself!

Which is to say, this is not really a valid statement. Buying good bread from a local bakery and later using it to make croutons is a pretty far cry from buying packaged croutons directly, the latter of which is a lot more reasonably described as a "pre-packaged corporate foodstuff" than the former.
posted by tocts at 5:48 AM on September 9, 2013


Ok, this is weird. In Australia, a Caesar salad always has bacon and eggs (usually hard boiled and quartered, but I use 62 degree eggs). It seems like the right and natural way of things.
posted by the duck by the oboe at 11:50 AM on September 9


Yeah you know what I love Australia and Aussies and I'm married to one and I'm migrating next year but you don't do Caesar salads in any right and/or natural way. At one point I ordered one and received lettuce topped with croutons, parmesan, a fried egg, and some anchovies, leaving me wondering why the cook had forgotten to mix the ingredients for the dressing. You may make a nice yummy salad that includes some ingredients used in Caesar salad dressing, but it is not, I'm afraid, a Caesar salad.
posted by olinerd at 6:13 AM on September 9, 2013


I ordered a caesar salad in the usa once and wondered why all my toppings had been blended into a smoothie. And now I know.
posted by lollusc at 6:18 AM on September 9, 2013 [3 favorites]


Can I point out that the original Caesar Salad didn't have anchovies, whole or diced? The anchovy-like flavor came from the Worcestershire Sauce.
posted by eriko at 6:34 AM on September 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


Also also, my favorite Foodspin: Tubular Freezer-Pop Flavors, Ranked.

Oh God that list order is so wrong I want to punch that guy. The only reason you pull a green one out intentionally is because your mom won't buy more until they're all gone and you don't want to have to eat six green ones in a row.
posted by middleclasstool at 6:39 AM on September 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


Bro, does this bro even Caesar?
posted by Ham Snadwich at 6:48 AM on September 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


By that logic, if you were going to use pre-milled wheat flour to make bread from which you'd later make croutons, you might as well just buy pre-made croutons. And don't even think about using wheat you didn't grow yourself!

Making your own croutons is wayyyyy easier than making your own bread. If you follow the instructions, you can probably be sure that the croutons will come out right the first time you make them, while bread can be a little more subtle.
posted by grouse at 6:58 AM on September 9, 2013


I feel like a fraud because I laughed like hell at the "bleach-haired goober" line, I laughed like hell at the Donkey Sauce joke, but I still like a ton of the places that goober recommends on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. He's an odious person who makes terrible food, but I still respect his ability to track down say, a mean meatloaf sandwich.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:59 AM on September 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


I imagine his producer's PAs do the fieldwork; all he does is get briefed on the restos, talk to the crew for long enough to get them ready for the shooting, and then babble on-camera for a few shoots. (Which, to be fair, is not necessarily an easy job either, but that's a different set of skills than finding and appreciating good food is.)
posted by ardgedee at 7:24 AM on September 9, 2013 [2 favorites]


[By that logic, if you were going to use pre-milled wheat flour to make bread from which you'd later make croutons, you might as well just buy pre-made croutons. And don't even think about using wheat you didn't grow yourself...]

This dude was advocating mayonnaise rather than separating egg yolks because it's easier, and then going on to say croûtons should be handcrafted because it's so much better than store-bought. I stand by my statement. Separating an egg takes about 20 seconds.
posted by Cookiebastard at 7:25 AM on September 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


Even worse that the removal of the raw eggs is the replacing them with Mayonnaise. Mayo is the enemy of the good

Oil emulsified in egg yolks is mayo.
posted by kenko at 8:12 AM on September 9, 2013


Actually, that's what makes the exclusion of egg yolk so weird. The author of the post justifies the exclusion in comments by saying there are more uses for homemade croutons than homemade "emulsified egg yolk", but (a) emulsified egg yolk = mayo, and the mayo you make yourself is likely to be a lot better than anything you get in the store (add some raw garlic for excellent aïoli, a spread of many uses); (b) you're just making dressing for one salad, right? So just use one egg yolk (or two if it's a gigantic salad). You add the yolk itself. You don't make "emulsified egg yolk substance" separately and then add that; you just add the yolk. It's bizarre.
posted by kenko at 8:14 AM on September 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


kagredon: I wonder if there's some editorial shyness about using raw eggs going on?

I've got to think that plays into it. "Sorry, Burneko, can't have you telling people to eat raw eggs. Take that part out and we'll publish it."
posted by Rock Steady at 8:24 AM on September 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


And, of course, Alton Brown talking about the Caeser Salad in an early ep of Good Eats. (14:29 in, if the timelink doesn't work properly). He talks about the egg yolks and anchovy stuff, if you're interested.
posted by themadthinker at 8:25 AM on September 9, 2013


Can I point out that the original Caesar Salad didn't have anchovies, whole or diced? The anchovy-like flavor came from the Worcestershire Sauce.
posted by eriko at 6:34 AM on September 9 [+] [!]


The anchovy-like flavor in Worcestershire Sauce, however, comes from the anchovies in the Worcestershire Sauce.

Someone upthread mentioned the idea of vegan Caesar. I would recommend substituting Pickapeppa Sauce for Worcestershire/anchovies, and there are commercially available "veganaise" mayo substitutes that would probably work as egg/mayo substitutes for Caesar. I know people who use nutritional yeast as a parmesean substitute, but I'm not sure how that falls in the spectrum of veganism. It's worth a try if you're into that sort of thing.
posted by Cookiebastard at 8:42 AM on September 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


1. Caesar salad requires freshly ground pepper. The pepper does not need to be delivered by a waiter using a hilariously large pepper grinder, but it is a requirement.

2. Eriko is correct; Worcestershire sauce is a requirement.

3. A little anchovy paste goes a long way. If you really want to be brave, use several anchovies.

4. If your idea of adventure is making delicious food taste like OMG, Garlic!!!, your taste buds may be desensitized. Let the other flavors play, too.

5. Separating eggs is not the problem; salmonella in factory eggs is the (massive, scary, gross) problem. Use pasteurized eggs.

6. The worst sin of Caesar salad is putting on way, way too much dressing. Corollary: The worst sin of salad is putting on way, way too much dressing. Dress the whole salad, not individual servings. Use just enough dressing to moisten most of the salad. If there's dressing left in the bottom of the salad bowl, you used too much.

Freshly homemade Caesar salad is really good. You should make some. Just don't leave out the pepper.
posted by theora55 at 9:00 AM on September 9, 2013


Caesar!? I barely knew her!

sorry
posted by thisclickableme at 9:14 AM on September 9, 2013


For those who question the potency of six cloves of garlic, I'm guessing that you haven't had a raw application of garlic recently. I am a huge garlic fan, I use shitgobs of it every time I cook. But I made a very large batch of tuna salad recently where I started popping in 6 or 7 gloves of garlic as if I were making a spaghetti sauce, and holy shit was that hot and garlicky. And we're talking like 2 quarts of tuna salad. Applying even the slightest amount of heat to garlic tempers it quickly. But absolutely raw is something powerful.

And for a vegan version of caesar salad, I would try subbing silken tofu for the egg, or even a prepared condiment like Vegannaise. Nutritional yeast, in moderation, would probably be a passable sub for parmesean. But achovies, I got nothing there.
posted by slogger at 10:11 AM on September 9, 2013


Soy aminos might work. Or a little bit of miso.
posted by kagredon at 10:12 AM on September 9, 2013


There is vegan Worcestershire sauce, which I believe is made with dried seaweed to get something resembling anchovy flavour.
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 10:47 AM on September 9, 2013


That's it then. I'm going to have to try making a vegan Caesar salad the next time I go to a potluck. A kick you in the face vegan Caesar salad that stabs you in the eyes with garlic that jumps down your esophagus and strangles your senses and bashes you in the shins with a lead pipe of fresh-made croûton fantastic-ness and, um, how does that guy go on for a full page like that? Anyway, it should be a pretty good salad.
posted by Cookiebastard at 11:12 AM on September 9, 2013 [3 favorites]


Substitute Thousand Yard Stare Dressing
posted by thelonius at 12:53 PM on September 9, 2013 [2 favorites]


I was kind of reminded of Thug Kitchen, too.

More than reminded. It's a tl;dr version of Thug Kitchen.
posted by blucevalo at 1:27 PM on September 9, 2013


> So, logically, mayo is perfect?

That's not any logic I know, unless you believe that the enemy of my enemy is... me?

So disappointing to see that BIG MAYO has gotten to you people.
posted by .kobayashi. at 4:35 AM on September 10, 2013


So does he have any recipes for jellyfish? Because that's what we really need.
posted by happyroach at 6:49 AM on September 10, 2013


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