A favorite restaurant meal that you can easily recreate at home, this tasty and filling salad is ready in about 30 minutes. I love main-course salads. They are tasty, fresh, and very filling. They are obviously perfect in the summertime, but I actually enjoy them year-round. 🥗
Ingredients
Here’s an overview of what you’ll need to make this salad. The exact measurements are listed in the recipe card below. I rarely finish the humongous servings typical of American restaurants. So I get to take home the leftovers and enjoy them the next day for lunch.
For the dressing: Olive oil, vinegar, mayonnaise, Dijon mustard, salt and pepper, and garlic powder.Sliced hard-boiled eggs: Sometimes I slightly undercook them, so they’re not exactly soft-boiled eggs but actually medium-boiled eggs. The yolks are not liquid, but soft. Yum.Crispy bacon, chopped: Even if you usually like your bacon chewy, for this recipe, it’s best to make sure it’s crispy.Cooked chicken breast, sliced: You can also use rotisserie chicken and slice or cube it. Just make sure to remove the skin. Cold chicken skin is rubbery.If you’re curious about how I season the chicken prior to baking it, I often use salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and smoked paprika.Vegetables: Salad greens (or baby spinach leaves) and sliced cherry tomatoes (or use regular tomatoes and cube or slice them.)Sliced avocado: I’m a big fan of the very creamy Haas avocado. Other varieties are often too fibrous and watery.Crumbled cheese: Blue cheese is classic, but I’ve used goat cheese or even feta and both were excellent.
Instructions
Despite its complexity, making Cobb salad isn’t difficult, especially if you prep some of the ingredients ahead of time. Scroll down to the recipe card for detailed instructions. Here are the basic steps:
You start by whisking together the dressing ingredients until they emulsify into a smooth, velvety salad dressing.Next, arrange the salad greens on a large serving platter.Now, arrange the remaining ingredients on top of the greens. You can pretty much arrange them in any order you like - you can see how I do it in the photos and in the video below.The last step is to drizzle the dressing on top of the salad and serve.
Expert tip
This salad contains quite a few ingredients. And you need to cook chicken breast, bacon, and hard-boiled eggs to make it. So I keep things simple by preparing these ingredients the day before. They need to be cold anyway. I make baked chicken breast (or broiled chicken breast), oven bacon, and hard-boiled eggs the day before, and refrigerate them. The next day, assembling the salad is a breeze!
Frequently asked questions
Variations
The classic Cobb salad is made with chopped salad greens, tomato, crisp bacon, chicken breast, hard-boiled eggs, avocado, chives, Roquefort cheese, and red-wine vinaigrette. But like all salads, it’s a flexible recipe that has countless versions. Here are a few ideas for varying the classic recipe:
I often use spinach leaves instead of salad greens.Change up the cheese you use. I love using gorgonzola or stilton as my blue cheese, but you can actually use any number of crumbled cheeses, including goat cheese and feta.Use cubed deli ham instead of crumbled bacon.Use your favorite salad dressing. Good options include ranch dressing and blue cheese dressing. A mustard dressing is also good in this recipe.
Serving suggestions
The presentation is really important here, as you can see in the photos. It’s such a gorgeous salad! So it’s best to serve it as shown rather than mixed. You can drizzle half the dressing over the greens, then the remaining half over the remaining ingredients. Or you can arrange the salad first, present it at the table without the dressing, then pour everything into a large bowl, add the dressing, and mix.
Storing leftovers
The salad greens will become soggy if stored, so I don’t keep those. And the avocado might turn brown. But the rest of the salad keeps fine for 2-3 days in the fridge, in an airtight container.
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Recipe card
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