I've been making nice chef's salads for many years but I never thought to put a recipe for one into Food Nirvana. This recipe corrects that oversight, noting that the potential varieties of foods served in a chef's salad are many, so a single recipe hardly captures all of the possibilities.
A chef's salad is a perfect meal on hot summer days as it is easy to prepare and involves no cooking other than making a few hard boiled eggs (and optionally a few slices of bacon). Best of all it is very tasty given a variety of charcuterie (lunch meats), cheeses and cold vegetable (and sometimes fruit) ingredients, along with the salad dressing of your choice, and maybe some artisan crackers on the side.
Depending on your choice of ingredients a chef's salad can actually be perfect to help you lose weight ... but for that you must limit meats and cheeses, and perhaps use a low calorie salad dressing. Alas, my sweetheart Peggy and I use my bleu cheese dressing, and that isn't low calorie!
Note that I list a few vegetable ingredients below that are not seen in the online picture of the chef's salad. I also thought about including strawberries and pieces of mandarin oranges, etc., in this recipe, but you can decide if you want to include fruits in your chef's salad.
Final thoughts: 1) all ingredients should be cold and kept in the refrigerator before use, and 2) If you don't have a large enough shallow serving bowl or plate you can build the salads individually in the pre-chilled guest serving bowls.
Okay, enough talk. Let's make a chef's salad.
Ingredients: (three to four servings)
3/4 (or more) of a large head of Iceberg Lettuce, chopped
2 extra large hardboiled eggs, to be sliced in an egg slicer when building the salad
20 red salad tomatoes (or less if they are large/long salad tomatoes)
20 slim celery sticks
20 slim carrot sticks
20 slim bok choy sticks (or Napa sticks)
8 quartered fresh red radishes
8 scallions, root base cut off and tops of the green parts discarded
20 ripe (black) olives
20 green pimento stuffed manzanilla olives
20 (or more) thin slices of English cucumber (do not peel English cucumbers)
6 rolled up pieces each of lunch meat ham, lunch meat turkey, Genoa salami and thin slices of medium rare roast beef
6 to 8 rolled up pieces each of Swiss, American and Provolone cheeses (Cheddar and Pepper Jack are also a good cheeses to use)
4 fried slices of dry cured hickory smoked bacon, broken into 16 pieces, or 1/4 cup of Hormel® lean bacon bits
Various salad dressings (your choice ... Why not make the excellent Food Nirvana bleu cheese dressing?)
Artisan crackers on the side (optional)
Directions: (Look at the pictures of chef's salads online to help you make and organize/arrange the ingredients)
Pre-chill the guest serving bowls in the refrigerator for an hour or more.
Boil the eggs for ten minutes in 3 cups of water, then chill them in cold running water in the saucepan you used to boil them.
Crack and remove the shells and set the eggs aside in cold tap water.
Process the large head of lettuce ... cut it in half , remove the stem areas and then chop 3/4 (or more) for the salad.
Make the slim stick vegetables from a large stalk of celery, one large carrot and one large stalk/stem of bok choy.
Clean the radishes in cold water, cut off the root and top for each radish, then cut the radishes into four pieces each and set them aside.
Rinse the salad tomatoes and set them aside.
Put both kinds of olives in small bowls.
Slice one half (or more) of a cold English cucumber into thin slices (less than 1/4" thick)
Wash the scallions, cut off the root area and the tops of the green parts. Set them aside.
Make tight rolls of the three different kinds of lunchmeat.
Make tight rolls or strips of the three different kinds of cheeses.
Build the chef's salad in a very large (18" diameter or larger) shallow bowl or on a very large diameter serving plate.
Put the chopped lettuce pieces in the middle and arrange the vegetables and olives in groups in a circle around the lettuce.
Slice the eggs using an egg slicer and place the slices around the outside edge of the bowl or plate.
Arrange the rolled up pieces of lunchmeats and cheeses on top of the lettuce, shaped/mounded to be attractive, but do not cover the center of the salad.
Put the bacon pieces or bacon bits on top of the lettuce at the center of the salad.
Serve the salad cold along with pre-chilled salad bowls for your guests, along with (optional) artisan crackers on the side, and a cold beverage.
Put a variety of salad dressings on the table, spanning creamy, spicy, sweet and tart types.
Guests will build their own salads in their pre-chilled salad bowls using two large forks to extract ingredients from the chef's salad bowl/plate.
Enjoy! This kind of salad is very good ... Tasty and refreshing.