Chopped Chef Salad with Creamy Sweet Onion Dressing

Go green tonight with a chopped chef salad!

Pull up a fork for #4 in my Main Course Salad Challenge, where I’m sharing hearty main course salads to inspire you to lighten up dinner once a week this season, and hopefully beyond. Every once in a while, especially during the warmer months, a big salad for dinner just hits the spot. This one is bursting with protein, with a healthy dose of crunch!

chef salad is all about tradition

I’m going back to basics with this last installment of my main course salad challenge. You know I like to fool around with recipes and put my special tvfgi stamp on them, but sometimes tradition rules, and making a great chef salad is one of those times.

The origins of the chef’s salad are a little murky, nobody knows for sure when or where it was invented, but was on the menu of the Ritz Carlton Restaurant in New York City starting in the 1940s and that’s really where it got its popular start.

The non-negotiable ingredients for a great chef salad

• the meat: ham and turkey (or chicken) and bacon (used smoked meats for extra flavor)
• the cheese: more than one kind, I’m using Swiss and cheddar
• tomatoes
• carrots
• celery
• cucumber
• red onion
• boiled eggs
• good crunchy lettuce
• a fabulous creamy dressing

Why chop a chef salad in the first place?

• Chopping all the ingredients in a chef salad accomplishes a few different things. For one, it makes it easier to eat. There’s nothing worse than struggling to get a forkful of an ungainly salad.
• Chopping everything into similar sized pieces allows you to get a little bit of everything in every bite, so the wonderful flavor combinations in a chef salad can really shine.
• Remember, chop doesn’t mean shred, julienne, or slice…the even little chunks are critical to the experience of a great chopped chef, so get out your chopping tool (see the box below) for the perfect salad.

My stainless steel chopping tool is THE TOOL of the spring and summer season in my kitchen.  It just beats out the mandoline slicer for most useful FUN tool for salads, salsas, soups, ~ for any recipe where you want evenly chopped ingredients. I guarantee you’ll get oooohs and aaaahs at your next barbecue, potluck, or family picnic when you use the Alligator Chopper.

While you can find less expensive plastic versions of this chopper, I don’t recommend them, I’ve tried them and they don’t hold up at all, especially when you’re chopping dense or hard ingredients. This steel chopper will get you through years of fabulous cooking! 

This salad comes with the added bonus of a fabulous creamy sweet onion dressing

~ the dressing works really well to jazz up the mild flavors of the salad. It’s a Southern classic from down where sweet onions are a religion. If you can find a sweet Vidalia onion for this recipe, perfect. If not, another sweet variety will do. Sweet onions are milder than regular onions, and so they don’t overpower this dressing the way a regular onion would. Even so, when you pull the top off your blender after making this dressing you’ll get a definite onion-y blast!

I like to make the dressing the day before to let the flavors mellow.

It makes enough to fill a Bon Maman jam jar, about 13 ounces…more than you need, so store the rest in the fridge for your next salad.

Love chopped salads? Me too!

• Chopped Greek Salad
• Chopped Asparagus Salad
• Israeli Chopped Salad
• Chopped Salad with Spicy Tomato Vinaigrette
• Chopped Italian Salad Recipe

Chopped Chef Salad

3.61 from 56 votes

Chopped Chef Salad with Creamy Sweet Onion Dressing ~  the chef salad is an American institution, and probably the original main course salad.  

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Prep Time:40 minutes minutes

Total Time:40 minutes minutes

Servings: 6 servings

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Ingredients

 

US CustomaryMetric

creamy Sweet Onion Dressing

• 1/2 sweet onion such as Vidalia, Maui, or a generic sweet (about 5 ounces) Note: don't use a regular onion for this dressing, it will be too strong.
• 3 Tbsp apple cider or champagne vinegar
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1 heaped tsp creamy Dijon mustard
• pinch of salt
• 1/2 tsp white pepper
• 1/2 cup oil such as grapeseed, olive, walnut

chopped chef salad

• 5 ounces butter lettuce hearts (or romaine hearts, or iceberg) chopped
• 1/2 cup chopped ham, (I used Black Forest)
• 1/2 cup chopped turkey, I love smoked turkey
• 1/2 cup chopped bacon
• 1/2 cup chopped tomatoes
• 1/2 cup chopped cucumber
• 1/2 cup chopped hard boiled eggs, about 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup chopped Swiss cheese
• 1/2 cup chopped cheddar cheese
• 1/2 cup chopped celery
• 1/2 cup chopped carrots
• 1/3 cup chopped red onion

Instructions

for the dressing

• Remove the peel and cut the onion in large chunks. Add to the container of a high speed blender such as a Vitamix, along with the vinegar, sugar, mustard, salt and pepper. Blend until well pureed.
• Scrape down the sides of the container, and then, while the machine is running, slowly drizzle in the oil through a hole in the top. The dressing will become thick and creamy.
• Taste to adjust any of the seasonings. Keep refrigerated until needed. Note: this recipe makes more than you'll need for this salad, keep the leftover in the fridge and plan to use within 2 weeks.

for the salad

• Put the lettuce in a large salad bowl and add each of the other ingredients. If you’d like to do a composed salad you can arrange them attractively in little piles around the lettuce, otherwise just dump them all in.
• Lightly dress and then toss the salad. Serve more dressing on the side.

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Course: Salad

Cuisine: American

Author: Sue Moran

Keyword: appetizer, easy, healthy, recipe, salad

Nutrition

Calories: 427 kcal · Carbohydrates: 7 g · Protein: 16 g · Fat: 37 g · Saturated Fat: 9 g · Polyunsaturated Fat: 8 g · Monounsaturated Fat: 19 g · Trans Fat: 0.1 g · Cholesterol: 123 mg · Sodium: 600 mg · Potassium: 384 mg · Fiber: 1 g · Sugar: 4 g · Vitamin A: 2920 IU · Vitamin C: 5 mg · Calcium: 191 mg · Iron: 1 mg

Nutritional information is provided as a courtesy and is an estimate only. This information comes from online calculators. Although The View from Great Island attempts to provide accurate nutritional information, these figures are only estimates.

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