Chicken fillets seasoned with ranch, Worcestershire sauce, and liquid smoke, and pan-seared until golden brown. Fresh cut romaine lettuce, dressed with a homemade barbecue ranch, and topped with diced avocados, tomatoes, corn, and hand breaded crispy onion straws, for a perfect delicious recreation of Cheesecake Factory’s BBQ Ranch Chicken Salad. Also baked up a scrumptious strawberry crisp with crumb top.
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#saladrecipe #cheesecakefactory #strawberrycrisp
Hi everyone, Elsie Jensen here. Today we are going to make a barbecue chicken ranch salad. Kind of a copycat version of the um Cheesecake Factory. And we’re going to make a strawberry crisp. So, let’s start by getting our strawberry crisp going because that’s what’s going to be in the oven um and kind of cooking the longest. So, I’ve got a bunch of strawberries here um that I’ve already give them a quick rinse and then we’re going to slice them up and add them into our little Dutch oven. There we go. And so I just love like, you know, strawberry rhubarb bar. That’s funny. Strawberry rhubarb bars. It’s actually two words. Um and strawberry like kind of crumb little cakes. So I was like, ah, let’s do a, you know, strawberry crisp. So I’m not cutting my strawberries super small. I’m just kind of um quartering them um so that there’s a little bit of base on it. but they will sweat out a lot of juice, which we’ll add some corn starch to. So, they’ll have that nice kind of like fruity uh jelly part, which will go really well with our crisp. It’s kind of like we did blackberry crisp, you know, not too long ago, and that’s the same thing. Blackberry is like a a juicy fruit. Um and so, you know, you’ve got to add a little cornstarch to thicken it up. Here we go. So, I’m not sure if we’ll use all of these strawberries because I’m again I like to make these small batch crisps where they’re kind of, you know, perfect for just like with our lunch today since we’re doing a salad um versus having a huge bit. So, I’m doing it in my This is my like risoto uh pot from Lake Croet. And it’s actually just like the perfect size for doing a crisp because I can start it on the stove and then I finish it off in the oven. Okay. Do a few more here. But strawberries are so cheap right now. So, I’m anytime I can use them, I will. I just want to change it up from the, you know, just eating the strawberries fresh. Get a few more in here. And then we’ll add um a squeeze of lemon juice and about a third or so cup of sugar to sweeten them up just a little bit. Now, with strawberries, they do shrink down a lot. So, while it looks like a big bounty right here, um, they’ll shrink down significantly. Here we go. Just a few more on top of this. I will say like right now, I think I got these strawberries for $1.25 a package, which is a steal. You know, it’s these same strawberries in the winter will probably be like seven bucks. Okay, so we’ve got our good kind of covering. It was probably just a little over a pound of strawberries in here. And I just kind of quartered them. Now we’re going to add in our sugar. And I’m going to turn on my back burner and let it start kind of cooking up. And we want this sugar to start to melt in with the uh strawberry juices. So again, we’re just going to add like 1/3 cup of sugar. And then a squeeze of lemon juice. And this is going to just kind of give a little bit of tart flavor that I think really brings out the strawberries. We don’t need a whole lot cuz we don’t want to add too much extra liquid, but we do want a good good squeeze. So, we’ve got our lemon juice. I’m going to give this a nice stir. We won’t add our corn starch until the very end when we have kind of this nice little strawberry juice. There we go. So, I’m going to mix this up. Kind of coat everything. You have a question. Can you use bottled lemon juice? You can use bottled lemon juice. I just find that bottled lemon juice has a little bit of a chemical taste to it. So, I am always the advocate for fresh. I think fresh is better when it comes to that. While this is kind of cooking up, we are going to make our crumb for this. So, our crumb, we’re going to use a half a cup of melted butter, which is equal to one stick. Going to pour it in here. I’m actually going to get my little paddle out here and scrape off all of this butter. And then we’re going to mix a half a cup of brown sugar with this. So, we’re going to do kind of a rich crumb on it. And you’re going to want to pack down your brown sugar. So, put it. And then I’m going to pack it in that way. I make sure I have an accurate cup. There we go. And then we’ll mix this together. Then we’re going to add in a half a cup of oats. Let’s first kind of bring the brown sugar and the butter together. And we’re going to mix it until all those brown sugar clumps are gone. Here we go. Okay, looking good. Now, we’re going to add in a half a cup of oats. And this is just going to give it that nice crumb texture, too. So, I’ve got a half a cup of my oats in here, and we’re going to mix it up. We’ll add in flour in just a second, but we’re going to add in before we add in the flour, we’re going to add in some baking powder and a little bit of salt. And that baking powder will just give it a little bit of a puff to the crunch. Um, kind of giving you just a nice overall texture to it. Let me grab There we go. So, we need a half a teaspoon of salt. Lost the coffee scoop. A half a teaspoon of salt. And a half a teaspoon of baking powder. So, we’re going to add this. And we’re mixing this in before we add the flour. That way it can get completely incorporated. And then a half a teaspoon of baking powder. Now, a lot of crumbs or crisps that I make, I’ll add cinnamon to it, but with the strawberries, I’m not doing cinnamon today because I feel like that spice kind of conflicts with strawberries. There we go. So, we’re going to make sure we get this all mixed up in here. There we go. And now we’re going to add in our flour. And we’re going to use about 34 of a cup of flour to get the right kind of crumb texture. But before this, let me give this a little stir. As you can see, we’re already starting to get some of that strawberry juices sweating out. Looking good. good. So, let’s add in our 34s cup of flour. There we go. And we’re going to mix this. And I’ll probably go in with my fingers here in just a second just to get the right crumb texture. I want kind of thick crumbs, but I don’t want it to be too thick. So that you know you you want it you don’t want a thin crumb and you don’t want a thick one. So I’m actually going to add just a smidge more because I want it to crumb apart a little bit more. There we go. Here we go. So just about a tablespoon more. Just do a little bit at a time until we get to the right texture. And this is going to be the kind of the crumb topping for our strawberry crisp. And then we’re going to work on our um barbecue chicken ranch salad. um for lunch today. Kind of doing the copycat for uh Cheesecake Factory because that is like one of my favorite salads. There go just a smidge more. Then I’ll show you guys how I kind of want my crumb to look. So when I making it, I want it to look kind of just like this. Thick enough globs, but not super thick um and not thin. Okay, let’s give these strawberries a nice little stir. We’re going to let them just sweat out a little bit longer and then we’ll add our corn starch and we’ll put our crumb base on it and we’ll get this start baking. But while we’re doing that, let’s why don’t we prep our chicken to be seasoned up um for this because what I’m going to do is I’ll fry my chicken fillets or like pan sear them and then um we’ll slice them into strips in the second part. But I’m going to start I have two chicken breasts here and what I’m going to do is I’m going to kind of fillet them in half. That way they’re a little bit thinner so we don’t have um super thick chicken cooking on the stove. It’ll cook a little faster, keep it nice and moist. Here we go. So, I’ve got my four fillets here. Going to wash my hands now. And I’m gonna grab a fork because I’ll use it to flip after we kind of do our first round of seasoning on here. So for our seasoning on the chicken, I’m going to start with my worstershure sauce. My beloved Wishershir. We give a nice little drizzle over the top. The kind of the acidity in the worst will make it nice and juicy. It will kind of break down the fat in the chicken. Then we’re going to use a little bit of liquid smoke to kind of give it that smoky flavor like a barbecue. And I’m just putting a little bit in this cap because we’re only going to season this on one side because a little goes a long way. So a couple drops for each chicken breast. So it’ll probably like a half a teaspoon for all of it. But it has a lot of flavor. And I find if you try to free pour it, you’re going to pour too much. Let’s come back over here. There we go. Look, we’re getting all this lovely juices now. They’re starting to kind of wilt up. So, I’m going to add in my corn starch here real quick. Um, and kind of let this thicken up. We’re going to use We’re just going to do a nice dusting over the top. And again, this is just going to slightly thicken up our um our our strawberry base. So it’s not super liquidy. So I’m doing a light sprinkling over it. Kind of making a slurry. You have a question for liquid smoke. Which one is your favorite? Or mosqu or um you know I actually just like go in and buy whatever one I see first on there. I kind of like them both. So they’re I I’m not that, you know, picky about which smoke I use, I guess. We’re going to stir this in and we’re going to let it kind of thicken up and we’ll see if we need to add any more. I’ll add a little bit more because I want my gel to be a bit sticky now. It will thicken up a little bit more in the oven. So, we’re going to add again. Sprinkle it over. And now, so I probably used about like a half a tablespoon. Um, and this There we go. And the nice thing about corn starch is it doesn’t really have that much of a flavor. Um, but it’s going to give just a great taste to this. Like, it’s going to give it a great texture, not a taste. So, it won’t be runny. You’ll have a kind of a thickness to it. Okay, this looks good. I’m going to turn off my Hang. I’m going to bring it right over here because it’s hot. And now we’re going to take our crumb and we are going to kind of sprinkle it evenly over the top of our our strawberry base here. Now, if you had rhubarb, you could have done half strawberry, half rhubarb, and this could have been a delicious strawberry rhubarb crisp. But today, we’re just making a strawberry crisp. And now we’re putting that kind of crisp topping over the top. First, we’re going to make that even layer so we have it all covered up. But now, I’m going to go back and kind of fill it in. And so, we use baking powder in this. And that is going to work with the juices of the strawberries and the cake and gives it a little bit of a puffy kind of texture when it bakes up. There we go. So, put it all on there. So now we’ve got our delicious crisp talking topping, not talking. And we’re going to go pop this in the oven. What can you do an apple crisp the same way? Oh yes. Now with an apple crisp, I would um add use cinnamon to season it up and put cinnamon also in your crumb. Um and you probably can get by with um either no corn starch or just a smidge of cornstarch. We’re going to pop this in the oven at 350. And this just needs to bake for about 30 minutes. Um, but we’ll probably be done before that. Um, 25 to 30 minutes. If you have a really juicy fruit, it typically takes a little bit longer versus if you have more a less juicy fruit like an apple or a pear or um they take a little bit less time. And part of the thing that’s so lovely about this is I start it in a Dutch oven on the stove which starts to make the fruit tender already especially for like apples or pears that need a little bit longer. Okay, let’s get back over here while that’s baking. Got my wishes and my liquid smoke on here. Now we are going to put a little bit of ranch seasoning on this. We’re going to use half of this pack to make um our barbecue ranch dressing and half of this is going to season up our chicken. So, we’re going to get that kind of kick of ranch both ways. You have a question in the crispy sugarfree. Now, I don’t haven’t worked with a lot of those like Swerve or sugar-free varieties, so I don’t know how the crumb would turn out. Um, so I I don’t know that if that would work exactly well, but I’m sure you could give it a try. Um, I know that they’ve like done a lot to make that stuff work. Um, well, now you could always not add sugar to your fruit, but the crumb, I think you definitely need the sugar in. So, we’re going to do just a nice little sprinkle of our ranch seasoning over. And then we’re going to flip our chicken. There we go. And we’re going to just we’re not going to use liquid smoke on this side, but we’re going to use worsture and our ranch on it. And this will just give it a nice flavor. I think it ties it in um and brings it all together. gives it a little bit more flavor than I the cheesecake factory. There we go. Nice little dusting. Okay. And then we’re going to save the other half of this pack to make some homemade ranch. Think we’re good. Okay. I’m going to I’m just going to move my chicken over here because we’ll be cooking on it. Um, and we’ll be cooking it up in just a second here. But I want to start on my onions cuz we’re going to be making crispy onion straws. I think that’s one of the things that is so delicious about this salad is you’ve got the chicken, the barbecue chicken, avocados, corn, tomatoes. Um, the crispy onions are so good. So, I’m going to first start by just taking my top layer of my onion off um because it always gets a little bit chewy, doesn’t cook up as nice. And I’m using a yellow onion here. And then I’m just going to I think I’m going to cut them cut it in half and then we’ll just do our kind of our thin slices. So, these aren’t onion rings, you know, they’re crispy onion straws. Now, you could leave them in the ring form, but I find it’s just easier to coat them when I can break them apart and they fry up a little bit easier. There we go. And I’m making them nice and thin because I they’re again, they’re not an onion ring. They’re an onion like a crispy onion straw. So, they you don’t want a thick thick onion. There we go. But I will say one onion makes a good amount of straws. Although I’m sure my husband and my my older son will tell me I didn’t have enough because they these are the ones that I make for my green bean casserole. Um and they don’t really care for the green bean casserole, but they love the crispy onion straws and they’re like, “You need to make this more.” Angela sent you. Well, thank you, Angela. I’m going to just kind of shake these all apart. That way when we go to coat them, they’re broken apart. That way, each one can get its kind of coating and breading on it. You have a question. Do you post a weekly cook list on what you’re going to show for the next week? I do not, but I’ve had that asked a lot of times and we’re I’m thinking about getting it together. Most people who know me, I um I never have a plan, but I’m I’m working on it. Okay, let’s get our flour and everything kind of seasoned up for our onion straws. Going to put in about a cup and a half of flour here. And then I realized I left my panko breadrumbs in my pantry. So, let me grab them real quick because they will be needed to add a little extra crunch to our um onion straws. And then I’m just going to keep it simple. I’m going to use some Mrs. Dash’s table blend because we want to season them up. I’m going to add in I’m just going to use about the rest of that. That’s about a tablespoon. And then some garlic salt. Again, simple, savory. You don’t need to add onion powder. A lot of times when I’m doing a breading, I add onion powder, but we’re cooking up onions. So again, good amount so they have a salty flavor. About, you know, I want to say a tablespoon because like 50% of it is actually going to make it into the kind of breading part. So I’m going to give this a good stir up. There we go. And then I’m going to mix up my two eggs. I shouldn’t need more than that. You don’t need a lot of eggs for this. It’s not like with the chicken where you need a bit more. Although, I’ll say that. And I might need another egg. It’s always how it kind of works out. Okay, we’re just going to whisk it up so we don’t have any big egg whites. because those will kind of come up like a big string versus a well mixture. Okay, before we start dredging everything, I’m going to get my olive oil heating up for both of our chicken and for our onions. With the onions, since we’re frying them, we do need a good amount of oil in here. Um, just I put a nice kind of thin layer that does cover the whole bottom of my pan. I don’t completely submerge them. I’ll flip them halfway through. And then for our chicken, we just need a thin, you know, about a tablespoon in here. And this will kind of coat it up. Now, you could use less oil if you wanted a smaller pan for the onions, but I like to try to get it all frying up at one time. I’m going to start by heating up both of mine. um high. And then with the onion straws, we’re going to turn them down lower so they don’t burn. Now is the fun part. I’m actually going to take this flour for the first part and I’m going to kind of coat them. And this is kind of like our dredge. And I just find it’s easier to put them all on here this way. Do our kind of first dredge on it. And that’s going to help the eggs stick. And then uh and get that second layer breading. So we have lots of kind of crispiness to it. Now we’re going to add in our breadcrumbs. It’s about 34 of a cup there. Yeah. But have you ever tried onion straws in an air fryer? Um you know what? I have done it on my air fryer setting in the oven and it works really really well. Um and I just prefer them fried in the oil. I think they just have a slightly different crunch to them. They have that fried crunch. Um, so I have done it and it does work well. They they hold up well with it. But, uh, for my preference, I like the in the oil, you know, fried in oil just tastes better. Okay, we’re just going to take a kind of a handful of these. We’re just going to do a quick coating in it. We’ll give it a good shake out because we don’t need it to be completely. And then into our kind of crumbly mixture here. I don’t hand dip each one. These aren’t onion rings. Again, crispy onion straws. So, and then I’ll bring them back out to our cutting board. And we’ve already got kind of the first layer. It’s kind of a messy process, but these are delicious. And again, into this egg mixture. Shake off any extra because we don’t need it to be super thick. And then over to our seasoned with our breadrumbs. Now, when I’m doing this at Thanksgiving, I’m doing about 10 onions. So, just imagine this is like one onion. Um I do it for 10 onions because I make my homemade green bean casserole and I make everything from scratch with that. Um it is there is no like processed anything in it. But uh it’s a lot of work especially when my family like my siblings and my nieces and nephews and they all come by and they like steal the onion straws as they’re coming off the frying and so they disappear very quickly because they are delicious. Here we go. And you could totally eat these like an onion ring, but again, they’re not in an onion ring. There we go. Okay, down to our last kind of batch going into the egg. See, two worked out perfect. And then just coat them up. And that first kind of dredge just helps the egg stick on a little bit better than if you were to go straight to the um the egg and then the flour. Question. What seasoning did you use? So in here I kind of kept it really simple. I just used Mrs. Dash’s table blend and garlic salt. But again, you could spice these up any way you wanted. Oh, and po breadrumbs. Yes. Some seasoned panko breadrumbs. That’s going to give it a bit more of a crumb to it, like a crunch. There we go. So, you have a question. Could you use tempora batter instead of eggs? Yes. So, you could use a tempora batter on it. They make a slightly different texture and a slightly it’s slightly different. When I make onion rings, I kind of do that, but yes, you could to make it. Let me wash my hands up because along with breading the onions, I breaded my hands. There we go. Now, let’s check. See, I’m going to do a little drop. Not quite. Almost. This one, I think, is ready because it has less oil in it. So, we’re we’ll start putting our chicken in here to sauté up. I’m probably only going to do two at a time because I don’t think more will fit. There we go. And we’re just going to sear them up. Cook them on each side. That way when we build our salad, I’ll chop them into slices and we can kind of put them on there. But they’re going to We used our ranch seasoning, liquid smoke, wishes, so they’ll have just some great flavor for it. And I’m cooking it on a medium high of six. From what type of oil? So I am frying these in olive oil. I’m not frying them super high. My aim is to kind of cook them around 350 so we get this nice golden um crisp to it without burning them. Okay, let’s check our oil now. And the way I simply check my oil, and you got to be careful with this, you just want to use a drop of water. But you put a drop in, and if it sizzles right away, it’s ready. You see how it didn’t sizzle? So, it needs to heat up just a little bit longer. While that is heating up, I’m going to grab myself another cutting board. I have like 50 cutting boards below here, but I have my favorites, which are my big black one right here, which I’ve had for like almost 20 years, and then my my meat cutting board. Okay, let’s get our um lettuce prepped. Um that will be easy, and we can switch to frying real quick. So, I’m just going to be using I’ve got Roma and then I’ve got another head of Roma. I’m not going to use them both or all of it, but I’m going to use up the rest of this one. And then we’ll use some of the other one. But we used this the other day when we made Oh, what was it? We made a salad. It was so delicious. Now, a southwest salad. Okay, we’ve got our You know what? I’m actually going to chop it a little bit more. You know, that’s the one thing that’s nice about um if you’ve ever had a salad from Cheesecake Factory, they’re so big. So, it’s really you get a salad and then you get to bring home a salad. Um but their lettuce, everything is chopped up and coated so nicely with the dressing and everything. This is just I’ve been I’ve loved this salad ever since I was a kid. Here we go. So, we’ve got a nice kind of chop up on it. I’m going to add this to our bowl and then we’ll kind of cut up the other one. But I’m starting to hear my oil sizzle. So, we’ll probably I’ll check it and we’ll put our first round of onions in it. There we go. So, there’s that sizzle I’m talking about. Now, I’m going to turn my temperature down to a five. So, a medium because I don’t want them to burn, but I want them to kind of cook up nicely. And then we’re going to add in, you know, it might be easier just to do it with my fingers. That way, I can spread it out. You don’t want to crowd your onion straws. So, we will be doing this in batches. There you go. Okay. So, we’ll let that first batch kind of fry through and let’s get this chicken flipped over. There we go. Looking beautiful for this. It’s got that nice, you can see just that kind of crispy edge on it with the leg. And then we have our onion straws that are frying up. We breaded them with a, you know, table, Mrs. Dash’s table and some garlic salt just to give them a little extra kind of crunch on there. Okay, let’s get a little bit more lettuce here. I will say I love using Roma heads over getting bagged salad because my husband’s like, first of all, it lasts so much longer. And this one’s a really green leafy one. My husband dislikes the green leafy parts. He likes the white crunchy parts of it. He would eat iceberg lettuce every day if you could. Um, everybody else in my family, including me, like the nice green leafy parts. But a head of lettuce will stay really fresh in your fridge. It doesn’t go bad like those bags lettucees do after like 3 days. There we go. Although my husband’s salad will probably consist of some lettuce leaves, lots of onion straws, and chicken. Okay. But there are some whiter leaves in here as well. Set that there. Going to rotate because this side looks when I saw we’re about ready to kind of flip them here in a few minutes. But while we’re waiting for those to get a nice golden color, we’ll know when they’re ready to flip is when they you start to see that golden color. We are going to make our ranch our barbecue ranch dressing. So, I have got a cup of half and half in here. You could also use buttermilk if you wanted. When I don’t have buttermilk, I use half and half. And then some squeeze of lemon juice to get that kind of tart flavor to it because again, who has buttermilk? Unless you’re making your own butter, it’s not something that most people buy. Then we’re going to add in a cup of mayo. So, it’s kind of one cup mayo, one cup there. I’ll know cuz I’ve got this is a nice measuring thing on it. We’re going to mix this up. We’ll add in our ranch powder. And then we’ll add in some barbecue sauce. I might actually just pour out a smidge. There we go. That way I don’t go overflowing. Have you ever used powdered buttermilk? Um, I’ve used it in bread making, you know, homemade breads, but I haven’t actually used it by like reliqufying it and putting it in. So, um although that might be an interesting to use, you know, cuz I don’t often have buttermilk on it unless I know I’m making something with buttermilk. Going to flip these over, let them kind of crisp up and fry on the other side. You have a question. What is half and half? Half and half is half milk, half cream. So, I know in Europe they don’t call it that, but um that’s essentially what it is. is just half milk and half cream. It was a way to make your not go as rich as cream in your coffee, but go a little, you know, give you a little bit of richness. These are looking beautiful there. This one I might let cook for just a little bit longer cuz it’s nice and thick. But I’m going to get my first one off. And then we’ll let this cook for about 30 seconds longer. Turn it down just a smidge. And then we’ll add in our next round. That was a thicker one, so I want to make sure it gets cooked all the way through. And you can always tell by like when you push down on it how much give it has. I’m going to add in my ranch mix. And this is going to help thicken up your syrup as well. Um here you can always just use straight up milk in here too. It will give you a slightly runnier ranch which um I prefer than a like just a richer one. I’m actually I’m going to move it to a bigger one so that I’m not splish splashing everywhere. That’s one of my things. I always try to sometimes like push it into the smaller container and should just move to a bigger one. Question. Can you go over the process of when you battered your onions, the dredging and everything? Yes. So for it, um, we made our dredge, our seasoned dredge, which I did about 1 and 1/2 cups of flour with, um, about a tablespoon of Mrs. Dash’s table blend and then a, uh, about a tablespoon of garlic salt. And we mix those all together until we had, you know, the seasons mixed up well. Then I put our onions in it to where like I coated them with that powder to have it thick. And then I whisked up two eggs and we added um about a cup half a cup of panko breadrumbs back into that dredge. So then you take your flour coated onions and you going to dip them in the egg and then into your crumbs and then you’re ready to fry up. Okay. Beautiful. So, we’ve got a nice golden fry on our onion rings. And I’m moving them to I’ve got some napkins here because crazy, we’ve run out of paper towels in our house, but you just want to move them to either napkins or paper towels to soak up any of that extra grease. You could always put them on a like cooking drying rack as well. Um, but paper towels have always worked well for me. They are in this case cute little napkins. Okay, let’s get our next batch going in. We’ll sprinkle it all the way around. There we go. And just want to again, you don’t want to just drop them in. We want to make sure they can get as much individual space in here as possible. So, one onion I cooked up in two batches on my, you know, this is my 12-in frying pan. So, this is like my biggest frying pan that I own. So, more onions. It’s going to take a little bit longer at Thanksgiving. So, I have this huge lake cruset pot and I fill that up with oil and that’s what I fry it in when I do it there. Um, but okay, let’s get this. There we go. It’s starting to thicken up now. So, we’ve got our dressing here. And now we are going to add in some barbecue sauce to give it that barbecue ranch flavor. So, this could be any any brand barbecue sauce you like. I love the Sweet Baby Rays, the brown sugar one. Um, it’s my favorite. We’re going to add in about a tablespoon of barbecue sauce. And again, I just eyeballed it. And it’s going to give you kind of a light color to it, like a light pinkish brown color to your ranch, but it’s going to give you a nice barbecue flavor, which will be perfect. You have a question for someone thinking about getting those frying pans. How do you like them? I love them. I actually have them in my Amazon storefront, so there’s a link to that on my page. They I got them two years ago. I have not scratched them and they’re really easy to clean. And I think that’s like those are the two biggest things because I’ve owned a lot of non-stick frying pans before. And the biggest thing is they scratch really easily. For two years, not a single scratch. And I have the 12 in, 10 in, 8 in, and then I have the hex pad griddle pan. And I will say I absolutely love them. I would 100% recommend. It was Golden Ramsey who got me to try them in the first place. I saw it and I said, “Well, if he likes it, they must be good.” Um, and they have lived up to their expectation. Okay, for the rest of our salad here, we are going to cut up some tomatoes. I’m just going to have our tomatoes for this. Um because I want them, you know, got to have them. We’ll decorate it. I’m actually gonna try to build it exactly how they kind of build their salad at um Cheesecake Factory. But so good. And I will say I feel like the barbecue in the ranch just gives it just a little something extra for it. Okay. So, I’m using a bunch of cherry tomatoes here. And then, um, I have some corn. And I just use frozen corn that I dethawed. Um, and, you know, just so it’s nice and fresh, not frozen. You could use canned corn. Um, only problem if you use fresh corn, you’re going to have to blanch it. So, this is one where I’m like, frozen corn works. Okay. So, I’ve got my tomatoes. I’ve got my corn. And now we need avocados. I’ve got two avocados here. We are going to cut cube them up so that they’ll go in our If your avocado is nice and ripe, you should be able to peel off the avocado skin once you kind of cut it in half, which makes kind of cubing it up a lot easier. There we go. I’m going to turn up my fry oil just a little bit. And then we’ll dress our um lettuce leaves with a bit of our ranch dressing first um to give kind of coat up in that flavor. And then we’ll get this guy. I will say I think I just love avocados. But, you know, if you have ever have like a difficulty picking them out at the store, because at the store they’re always rock hard. So, I always just find, you know, the amount that I need that are all about the same like, you know, color and like firmness so that they kind of ripen up at the exact same side. And then I um leave them out on my counter for about one day before I pop them in the fridge. If you leave them out in your counter for too long, they’ll instantly go bad. But if you let them pop them in the fridge, it will stop them from kind of continuing. Okay, let’s get these. I’m going to just kind of slice it up and then we’ll turn it the other way and then slide it through. And now we have our nice kind of cubed avocados. first round. And again, if you just peel off that avocado skin, you’re going to be able to get that kind of pretty cubed avocado versus trying to scoop it out with a spoon. There we go. So, looking fantastic here. Now, this one was a little bit more ripe than the other one. But this is a crucial part of our salad. Got to love the avocados, especially when you’re going to pay an arm and a leg for an avocado. There we go. Beautiful. So, we’ve got our pile here, and I’m going to look at I’m going to kind of rotate this. We’re going to see how our chicken is cooking up. It is looking pretty good. What number are you cooking the onions at? Right now, I have them at about a five and a half. And so that is going to give it uh kind of like a cook at 350 to where it’s not too um too hot where you burn it because you kind of want that slow golden one. Um especially if you’re doing stuff other than vegetables. With onions, you don’t have to worry about, you know, having it undercooked. But I do want that onion inside to be tender instead of crunchy. So now I’m going to flip these because I can start to see how it’s getting golden. And I will say your first couple batches when you’re frying up onion straws uh fry up really really nicely. If you’re doing a huge number of onions, your oil will get a little bit murky and therefore you’ll have a bit more darker bits on it. They’ll still taste great, but you’ll have a slightly darker fry on it. But with one onion, we don’t really have to worry about that. It’s when we get to having like 10 onions like I do at, you know, Thanksgiving time. Okay, we’re going to let this chicken sit for just one more second before we let it um, you know, heat up because we don’t want all those juices to come out. But we can grab our strawberry crisp out of the oven and then we’re almost ready to kind of assemble. Oh, look how gorgeous that is. You can see that strawberry just bubbling up over the side. So bright and pretty. Gorgeous. I will say I think these are going to be so delicious. I was thinking I was like, “Oh, I wish I had rhubarb.” I’m like, “You know what? I love a good strawberry crumb bar, so why can’t we do strawberry crisp?” So, we made our delicious crisp topping using a stick of butter, a half a cup of brown sugar, a half a cup of oats, and 3/4 of a cup of flour. But the special ingredient is baking powder. It gives it a puff when you cook it up so that you have this kind of thicker base to it. Not all crumb, but a nice kind of base to it. And then that was about a pound of strawberries with a little bit of lemon juice and sugar and a pinch of uh cornstarch for this kind of perfect little strawberry gooey crumb crisp. It’s going to be delicious. Okay, these are just about done. So, let’s prep our chicken here. And I’m just going to slice it up and get all of my lettuce and what out of the way. So, this was our kind of our first round of chicken. There we go. Now, our more recent And I’m just again slicing it like so I can lay it on our salad. But you always want to let your meat sit a few minutes because if you cut it right away, all of those delicious juices will just slide right out and it won’t be as juicy. What did you season the chicken with? So the chicken I seasoned with wishes sauce, liquid smoke, and then ranch seasoning. So we used half of our ranch packet to make our dressing and then the other half was for our chicken. So we’ll have that kind of zesty ranch flavor to it, which will just add another level of flavor to this. Let’s get our crispy onion straws off. And then we’re going to dress our lettuce and build our salad. Make sure I get all of this because I don’t want any to get stuck in here cuz these things are so good. Perfect. And then I’m just going to move this slightly over. So before you build everything, the way I feel like always makes restaurant salad so good is they pre-toss their salad with dressing. So I’m going to put a little bit of our dressing in here to toss it up and then everybody will can drizzle more on if they want it. But that way you have kind of a nice coating on your leaves. There we go. I want to just make sure cuz we want all that flavor. I’m going to add a little bit more. And if it’s anything like my kids, my kids, they’re like 50/50. Half ranch to half lettuce, but we’ll do it not quite as crazy. Okay. So, we’ve got our dressed lettuce here, and now we’ll be ready to assemble our things. And I’m just going to do it right here. I’m going to get a plate and we’re going to build it just kind of how they do it at the Cheesecake Factory. So, we’re going to start. And this again is for our barbecue chicken ranch salad. We’re going to start with our romaine lettuce that we tossed in our homemade barbecue ranch. I’m going to put a nice layer down. Then the way they do it there, we’re going to add going to add tomatoes on both sides like kind of like in a triangle type thing. Then we’re going to add in our avocados. There our corn. So we’ve got our corn and now you do your chicken. You have like kind of couple there and a couple of crust. And this is our chicken that we marinated in liquid smoke wishes sauce and ranch. And then of course for the most delicious part, you top it with a good helping of crispy onion straws for the most delicious barbecue chicken ranch salad. And let’s not forget, we made our crumb, our crisp over here for dessert. So we’ve got our strawberry crisp with our, you know, oatmeal crisp topping. Well guys, thank you so much for joining us here today. Don’t forget to like and subscribe. I try to do live cooking every single day. Try to show you what we’re making for our family and hopefully teach you guys something along the way. Again, we do upload all of our videos through the link on the page. So, if you ever want to recreate any of these recipes at home, all you have to do is go to that link, search for what we cooked for, so barbecue chicken ranch salad, and um watch and cook along with us. We also have a link to our Amazon storefront that has all of our cooking gadgets that we use in the kitchen. So, I have my Hexclad um pans in there. I have my, you know, knives, cutting boards, all the different gadgets I use in here for you guys to check out um if in case you’re interested. But again, guys, thank you so much for joining us here today. Don’t forget to like and subscribe.
3 Comments
Nice! I'm loving this one and will make it soon. 😁Thank you!
Oh boy! ❤
Looks delicious! Will be making soon!