To make the perfect Cobb salad, you MUST use homemade dressing. Our recipe is filled with crispy bacon, hard-boiled eggs, chicken breast, and creamy avocado.
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00:00 How's it going everybody? It's Justin here in the Delish Kitchen studios. I love Cobb salads because
00:05 they're not really salads. They're kind of like an amalgamation of a lot of incredible ingredients
00:10 that just happen to be sitting on a bed of lettuce chopped up and that might make you think that
00:15 making a Cobb salad is going to be very straightforward but because we have these
00:18 disparate ingredients and things like that actually require a little bit of technique
00:22 to make a really incredible Cobb salad you have to give it some time and some thought.
00:25 That's what we're going to do here today. We're going to make sure that we have perfectly cooked
00:28 bacon, tender chicken, jammy eggs and really amazing dressing that'll come together in a
00:33 kind of ingenious way. So let's get into it. Let's talk about bacon. My favorite part of a
00:41 Cobb salad is that meaty, porky, salty, crispity, crunchity bite that you want and we're going to
00:47 make it in a skillet. We're going to make a little lardon. So I went ahead and chopped up some nice
00:52 thick bacon, high quality stuff that's always going to make a difference. And for cooking there's a
00:57 couple things I want to keep in mind. Number one, the vessel. I love using cast iron because bacon
01:02 and cast iron kind of have a symbiotic relationship. Cast iron provides really even intense direct
01:10 heat which is really great for rendering that fat and cooking the bacon and additionally that
01:15 grease that's going to sit in there as we cook it is going to help to add seasoning to the cast iron.
01:20 I also like starting in a totally cold pan. That is going to help not overcook the bacon and start
01:26 like cooking the meat before the fat is at a chance to render it out. By starting cold we're
01:29 going to start rendering the fat and the bacon is almost going to like quickly confit in its own fat.
01:35 So into our skillet we're going to go in with all of our little bacon slices. Make sure we're in as
01:40 about of an even layer as you possibly can and then we're going to turn on the heat to medium
01:44 and let it go for about as long as possible on the first side until it's nice and browned and crispy
01:49 and then we'll flip. Keep cooking until it's your desired bacon texture. I would say I wouldn't go
01:54 like totally like brittle break apart but you do want to have a little bit of texture in here
01:58 because we have some other chewier textures in this salad. Then I'm going to transfer it to a
02:02 paper towel lined plate and let it cool. Hard boiled eggs are a big part of Cobb salad. They're also an
02:06 incredible salad topper in general. I don't really love really really set hard boiled eggs especially
02:12 if they have like that they're so overcooked they have that gray outside ring. Truly one of my least
02:16 favorite things. I also don't want a soft boiled egg so that like the yolk runs and kind of like
02:21 makes all of the lettuce gloopy. So I'm looking for that jammy egg that everybody kind of wants
02:26 and I have the perfect foolproof way to do it. It's actually like very very straightforward.
02:30 We're going to start with already boiling water because that helps us control the temperature
02:34 and like how long this is going to be exposed to heat and then you're just going to lower your eggs
02:39 in one at a time two at a time with a slotted spoon so they don't break and then they're going
02:42 to cook for six and a half minutes on the dot. That's kind of my like ideal time and the other
02:47 thing that takes a little bit of effort that will help in this process is getting them directly into
02:51 an ice bath. Not only is it going to help with cooling them down quickly and making them handleable
02:56 it's also going to help to get them set and get that jammy texture that we're looking for. So once
03:01 they're in the ice bath it's going to be two minutes and you'll be having really awesome eggs
03:06 in under 10 minutes. It's perfect. You can prepare chicken however you want. For this salad grilling
03:10 is an amazing option. You could like brown it on a stove and then bake it but I think like the most
03:14 classic and classy way to prepare chicken for any salad and especially a Cobb salad is to poach it.
03:20 It creates tender juicy and like kind of like subtle and not too aggressively flavored chicken
03:26 that is great. For poaching we want to consider a couple of things. One we're going to start with
03:30 cold water or stock because if we start with it boiling it's going to cook outside in. The outside
03:35 parts are going to cook faster than the inside. If we start with everything the same temperature
03:38 it'll all rise at the same time and cook really well. Additionally we want our liquid to be
03:43 very very well salted. We want this to be like pasta water. We're not talking about like a couple
03:48 teaspoons we're talking about like a couple tablespoons of salt so that that can permeate
03:53 the meat with that seasoning. You can use a couple different liquids to poach. Water is the most
03:58 classic. I like using chicken stock. It adds a bit more flavor and richness. You don't have to use
04:03 like homemade. You could just use store-bought. That's totally fine. Into our saucepan I'm going
04:06 to add our cold stock and a bunch of salt. I'm going to mix that until it's nice and dissolved
04:10 and then I'm going to add our chicken. We're gonna get that over like medium high heat. While the
04:14 chicken is poaching I'm going to go ahead and prep our lettuce. In this case it's going to be
04:18 romaine. You could maybe get away with iceberg but we really don't want anything fancy. No arugula,
04:24 no mesclun mix. We want something sturdy and leafy that's going to stand up against all the other
04:30 toppings in our salad. To get like perfect bite-sized pieces of romaine I first just take my
04:34 knife and I lop off the back piece and then I go ahead and I kind of I can decide depending on how
04:40 big you want them. I'm either quarter or half the romaine lengthwise. So I'll go in with my knife
04:45 and I'll just go down like that. I like a quarter because I like the pieces I get from that. I'll
04:50 go ahead and do the same going this way and then I'm just gonna basically roughly chop some nice
04:58 size salad pieces for this. You want something that's like bite-sized like this is kind of
05:04 perfect and you can vary it depending on how big you want your leaves to be. The minute you see
05:10 some movement on top of the water the rolling of that boil I'm gonna go ahead and flip my breasts
05:17 and then I'm gonna take a cover get it off of the heat and pull it totally away and let that do the
05:23 remainder of the cooking. This gentle poaching is kind of perfect for what we're looking for for
05:29 this chicken. This will just like sort of like almost do like a baby sous vide moment because
05:34 we're not going to be like cooking it at a high temp the whole time. It'll keep everything nice
05:38 juicy tender and then this will sit for like five to ten minutes. I'm going to test it with a
05:42 thermometer to see if it's 150 degrees and then I'm going to pull it to a cutting board. That might
05:47 seem low for poultry but we're going to rest it for three to five minutes and that resting is going
05:51 to help to redistribute the juices and let that residual heat continue to cook the breasts and I
05:56 promise even though it's not like that perfect 165 it's totally safe to eat and it's going to be
06:01 really tender. To make the dressing we're going to use a little hack that a lot of chefs like to use.
06:05 I actually have seen Jacques Pepin use this technique. It's by using a jar to emulsify as
06:11 opposed to whisking everything together. You can add whatever vinaigrette ingredients you want to
06:15 a jar and shake it up and it should become a beautiful delicious dressing. This one couldn't
06:19 be simpler. It's literally three ingredients, five if you include salt and pepper, but into the jar
06:24 we're going to add olive oil, red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, and a bit of salt and pepper. Once
06:29 all your ingredients are in your jar make sure it's nice and tight and then give it a shake
06:33 like you're a fancy mixologist at a cocktail bar. I want to get there nice and fast. We are very
06:40 quickly emulsifying and this is actually kind of a more foolproof way of doing it than of whisking
06:46 it together. You're getting everything really quickly agitated creating those little bubbles
06:52 of vinegar and getting it dispersed into the oil and then after a while you can see we have a
06:57 perfect vinaigrette. I'm gonna open it up. I'll taste it and I'll look at it. I mean this looks
07:03 pretty dang good to me but I'll taste it. Really well balanced. I might add a little bit more salt
07:09 but this is kind of perfect as is and you can do this with shallot. You could do it with different
07:14 vinegars. You could add honey. All different things but I love making my jar dressing and
07:19 you can take this to the office. You could take this into the fridge and it stays just like this.
07:24 All right we have all of our components. We are ready to build our salad. I like starting with a
07:28 big bowl of lettuce and then I'll build it in like stripes. It'll be stripes of beautiful
07:33 delicious ingredients. We'll start with bacon. Now I'm gonna lay down some slices of avocado.
07:38 Some nice chunks of chicken that I went ahead and tossed in a little bit of black pepper and salt.
07:43 Crumble on some of that blue cheese. You know that's necessary in this salad. Then we're gonna
07:48 go in with some grape tomatoes and finally those perfect little jammy eggs that I've cut in two
07:53 little quarters. I love how this looks just like this but we do need to dress it so we're gonna go
07:57 in with a generous amount of our vinaigrette. And then I'm gonna finish this because I think it looks
08:01 really nice and we also need a little bit of that allium taste with some chives. And then we're
08:05 gonna be ready to serve. This is definition dinner salad. It is hearty and I cannot wait to dig in.
08:15 First off we didn't talk about it a lot in the course of this prep but blue cheese is a necessary
08:20 part of this salad. It adds that funk and creaminess that I think is super important to the
08:25 salad. The eggs are perfect and you can get a little bit of that jamminess and that perfectly
08:30 set white. The chicken is tender and juicy and I let it cool down so it's nice and cold. We get a
08:34 burst of acid from the tomatoes, crispiness from bacon, and this dressing. Guys a lot of people
08:39 can put creamy dressings on their cobs but I'm telling you you kind of need a vinaigrette to
08:43 punch through all of those pretty rich flavors of all these toppings. I would maybe serve this with
08:49 like some toast or something but honestly the whole point of the salad is it should be a meal
08:53 onto itself. I like that we were able to learn a couple of different techniques while making this
08:59 salad. So for more recipes that can be surprisingly very educational stick around here on delish.com.
09:05 [Music]