Shrimp Caesar Salad

Chef Jennifer Chandler prepares Shrimp Caesar Salad with Homemade Caesar Dressing

Now Caesars are such pretty easy to make. First of all, what I want to do is I’m just going to mix it all in one batch. I’ve got a couple cloves of garlic, just break that. Usually when you just push it down. Now, if you like a lot of garlic, you can add as much as you want. If you don’t care for too much garlic, just add one or two. It’s kind of to your own taste. I like my own little garlicky because once it mixes with the leaves or the lettuce, it tends to mellow it out a little. So, I’m just going to go ahead smash this down a little bit to help it out or you can just drop it in like that. There we go. Now, I have a couple anchovies right here. Now, everybody is like, “Oh anchovies!” I know, I do it too. Good! Good! It’s nice! A lot of the people in the restaurant they’ll say, “No anchovies, I don’t like.” They don’t realize they’re eating the anchovies when they get Caesar salad. It’s just you don’t see it because it’s all puréed. So, we’re just going to throw those little guys in there and I’m just making a small little batch, you can make a big container using more eggs. And it’s usually like one egg, a couple of pieces of garlic, anchovies, and then I got a quarter cup of lemon juice. And I’m just going to use this flavor. It’s just kind of one of those you add, taste. You’re like, “Okay, I think it needs more citrus or salt or pepper.” But I’m just going to do the one egg. In the restaurant, I always make like 10 so, I’m used to making a gallon size. Okay and then I have some lemon juice. And I’m going to just pour it in. Now, I’m not going to add too much there because I want to adjust it later. I’m going to taste it, going to see what I got. We got a little Worcestershire sauce here and again that’s to your taste. I usually put maybe a quarter of a teaspoon. I have little Dijon mustard and that’s about a quarter teaspoon, maybe a teaspoon and a half of that. And since these are already all pureed, the main reason we’re doing this is to break up the anchovies and the garlic and to also emulsify the oil. And then I have some parmesan cheese and we could probably put about a quarter cup or again, this is something that’s to your taste. So pop that in there. All right, now that that’s all together, I’ll wait for the salt and the pepper because the anchovies do have a lot of salt so you don’t want to overpower it. And then this all together. Okay, now once that’s all pureed I have my oil. You can use peanut oil, vegetable oil, nothing really with a lot of flavor like olive oil or something you don’t want to use that, just something light. And I have little holes in here. So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to turn it on. It got a little leak, that’s all right. What I want to do is while I’m pouring this in here, I’m just trying to eyeball it and I’m going to watch it, it’s going to turn kind of more pale, the oils and stuff together. So, I’m just going to do that and hopefully we don’t leak everything out. Okay. And you make too big of a mess there. See, notice how it turns, it started to turn white. It was the most fine and there’s our Caesar. Usually, the egg can handle a lot of oil. So, if you decide, you know if it calls for like a cup or so, if you add more, it will be all right. And plus if it breaks, you can just zap it again and it will emulsify it, all right. See if I can get this off. And this is where I want to, let me see, we get a little bowl back here and a spatula. Now, I’m going to adjust my seasoning and add anything that needs to be added to it. And that’s just as simple as it is. And I like to make my own Caesar just in case I like the garlicky taste. Sometimes you get from the store and you’re like, “This is too bland.” And it’s so simple. Let me check on my croutons. All right, remember just in time. See, nice, golden brown. You don’t know how many times this gets burned in a restaurant. You’re like, “Oh no, the croutons!” All right, now I’m just going to test my seasoning. Add a little bit of pepper, nice garlic favor, that’s for sure. And I’m not going to put anymore salts in. I think it got enough salts from the anchovies and the parmesan cheese. And so I’ll do that. But I’m going to add a little bit of the lemon juice just to cut the garlic. Now, if you want, you can always add like more parmesan cheese and make a little bit more consistency in there, all right. I’ll have that one more time. This is definitely something you don’t want to make on a first date. All right, now that we have that, I’ll get some of this out of the way and well—together our salad. Here we go. Get a nice big bowl that we can toss it around. Have a little pair of tongs here. First of all, I’m going to go ahead and add some parmesan cheese in there, okay. And then I’m going to add a little bit of a Caesar dressing. You can add as much as you like. I like to add enough just to coat the leaves or lettuce. There we go. And then just kind of toss it around there. Here we go. Add a couple of our croutons. Oh, these are nice, all right. There we go. Now, what I’m going to do is I got the shrimp here and I’m just going to cut up a couple of them, just to toss inside the salad. Cut off the tails. And I’m coming down the side. Okay. Now, you can get these already cooked. You can make some of yourself. It’s great if instead of shrimp, you can use chicken. It’s whatever you might have left over or you can do without the protein. Just have a nice Caesar salad. Here we go, a little taste. Does everybody like shrimp here? Okay, that’s one thing you should, and like oh no. I might have to set a couple aside or you can make a buffet out of it. I have a couple different little items sitting now. All right, I’m going to pull my bowl over here. I’m going to sprinkle a little parmesan cheese on top and then nice tomatoes just to add a little color and because they’re so good for you, then a couple of shrimp, we’ll just put them together like they’re in love, add a couple of our cute little croutons. There we go. That is our beautiful little Caesar salad.