How to Make A High-Protein Cobb Salad to Keep You Full | America’s Test Kitchen

Sam Block shows the best way to assemble a high-protein Cobb salad, by starting with the cooked pieces like hard-boiled eggs, roast chicken, and bacon. Sam recommends dressing each ingredient separately before arranging them together on a platter to ensure that the entire salad is perfectly seasoned.

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– Who says salad can’t
be a hearty main course? This classic Cobb salad sure doesn’t. Not only is a Cobb salad
packed with a ton of protein and exciting flavors and textures, it also comes with a
show-stopping presentation that invites you to dive in. With a few key techniques,
you’ll certainly be won over with a flavorful, far-from-bland salad that’s perfect for entertaining. By the way, this lesson is from our hearty main
course salads class, out now on ATK Classes on the
America’s Test Kitchen app. In this class, we’ll cover
everything from handling and selecting salad greens to
making your own vinaigrettes and creamy dressings and
bringing it all together in a perfectly dressed salad. You’ll learn flavorful ways to add protein as well as how to create
satisfying salads without the meat. And we’ll explore twists on classic salads like Caesar and salade nicoise. Learn at your own pace and
have fun while you do it. But first, let’s make a Cobb salad. The great thing about Cobb salad is that there are so many
different components to it, but that can also make
it kind of challenging. There’s raw components and there’s cooked
components to the Cobb salad. So we’re gonna start
with what gets cooked, starting with our hard-boiled eggs. And I used our steam bath
method to hard-boil our eggs, which you can find linked in this course. But you could also use whatever hard-boiling method you prefer. So I’m gonna set these aside and focus on our next
component, the chicken. So I have three chicken breasts here. They’re about six ounces each. And the first thing I
wanna do is season them. So I have some kosher
salt and black pepper. Now, you could certainly
use table salt here, but I just prefer to use kosher. It’s easier to see on the chicken, and you’re less likely
to over-salt your chicken if you’re using kosher versus table. And I’m using freshly cracked
pepper, too, right on top. Rather than get my hands all chickeny, I’m gonna just use my
tongs to give these a flip and season the other side. I’m also seasoning from
high above the plate, which gives us a more even
distribution of our salt and more pepper. We’re gonna broil our
chicken for this salad. And what’s great about it
is that broiling chicken is super easy. It develops some browning on the chicken, but it really is a no-fuss situation. I’ve got a wire rack
sitting in my baking sheet, and I’m just gonna give it a good spray with some cooking spray just to ensure that the chicken
doesn’t stick to the rack. And you could also use a
broiling pan if you have one, but a rack and a sheet
pan work just as well. So onto our rack goes our chicken, lined up like little chicken soldiers. I have my oven rack six inches
below the broiler element, and we’re gonna broil our
chicken for four to eight minutes until the tops get lightly browned. And then I’m gonna give them a flip and continue to broil them for
another six to eight minutes until the chicken registers 160 degrees. All right, our chicken has,
I believe, finished cooking. But just to double-check, I’m gonna use my thermometer to check. Again, we’re looking for 160 degrees. 161, excellent. And look how pretty the chicken looks. There’s some nice golden
brown color on top. So quick, so easy. Let’s move on to the final
cooked element of our salad, which is our bacon. We’re using eight slices, or eight ounces, of bacon total for this salad. And I already have seven
slices that I’ve cut up. Now, you can use your chef’s
knife to cut these into strips, but I’m gonna use my kitchen shears. I just think this is a great
utilization of this tool. And we’re looking for
about quarter-inch strips. Now, if you’re having a hard
time cutting your bacon, even if you are using your
kitchen shears or your knife, you can throw it in the
freezer for a few minutes to kinda harden it up, which makes cutting through
your bacon a lot easier. I have a 10-inch nonstick skillet here, and I’m gonna add our strips
of bacon right to the skillet. And we’re gonna turn
our heat up to medium. Now I do have some bacony hands, so I’m gonna give my hands a quick wash, and then we can start
going on our vinaigrette. Now, there are a lot of
components to a Cobb salad, so you want a dressing
that can really stand up to all those different components. So we’re talking high
acid, lots of flavor, but nothing that’s gonna mask the flavors of the components themselves. You could use a bowl and a whisk to assemble your vinaigrette,
but I like to use a jam jar. Now, this is great if you wanna make the vinaigrette ahead of time,
’cause all you have to do is pour your ingredients
in, give it a shake, throw it in your fridge
until you’re ready to use it. So we’re gonna start with our olive oil. I have a half a cup of
extra virgin olive oil. Now we’re gonna add two
tablespoons of red wine vinegar, two teaspoons of lemon juice. Again, we’ve got a lot of acid going on with this vinaigrette: the vinegar and the lemon
juice, nice and bright. I have one teaspoon of Worcestershire, a little umami boost,
one minced garlic clove, one teaspoon of Dijon mustard. This is gonna help emulsify, and again, add a little bit
more umami to our vinaigrette. A quarter teaspoon of sugar, an eighth of a teaspoon of black pepper, and a half a teaspoon of table salt. Then, easy peasy, just add your lid and take out any frustrations
you might have with a shake. (dressing sloshing) All right, our dressing is done, so I’m gonna set this aside. Now, if you did wanna
make this ahead of time, just be sure to give it a
good shake before you add it to your salad when you’re ready to plate. In the meantime, you can see that my bacon is starting to render; it’s starting to take on
a little bit of color, which is great. So I’m just gonna keep stirring our bacon until it gets nice and crisp,
and then we can move on. All right, our bacon is nice
and crispy, as you can see, and I’m just gonna take a slotted spoon and transfer this to a
paper towel-lined plate. And as it sets, it’s gonna
continue to crisp up even more. We’ve talked a lot about
the cooked ingredients in the Cobb salad, and now it’s time to move on
to the uncooked ingredients, starting with our grape tomatoes. Here I have 10 ounces of grape tomatoes. You could certainly use cherry tomatoes, but we like the pop of the grape tomatoes. They’re a little bit more sturdy and substantial for the salad itself. So I’m just taking my knife and cutting it through
the stem lengthwise, which makes that little bit
of an opening in the tomato to help soak up some of that
vinaigrette, which is great. And it also gives it a forkability effect when you’re trying to eat your Cobb salad. Next up, we have our avocado. I have two ripe avocados here. Avocado is a classic
ingredient in Cobb salad. It adds lovely creaminess, some richness. So let’s talk about
how to prep an avocado. So the first thing you wanna do is halve the avocado lengthwise. Now, some people like to do
this directly in their hand, which isn’t exactly the safest way, but if you choose to do so,
make sure that you have a towel between your hand and the
avocado to protect you. I, however, am going
to rely on the support of my cutting board. I’m gonna run my knife
lengthwise across the avocado, and I’m just sort of pressing the avocado against the cutting board as my support, so it doesn’t go flying anywhere. And then you can just give it a twist. We want to remove the core of the avocado. So I’m gonna, again, place it directly on the cutting board for support and focus on getting the heel of the knife right into that core. So just give it a little tap, twist. Now, rather than grab the
pit right off the knife, to be more safe here, I’m just
gonna take my index finger, press it on top of the spine of the knife, and press down with my other
fingers, and we’re good to go. All right, so now I’m
gonna take a nice big spoon and scoop out the flesh, digging my spoon right around the edge where the flesh meets the skin. And we’ll put it face down
onto our cutting board, same with the other side. And we want to cut our
avocado into half-inch pieces. These are nice bite-sized pieces so that everybody gets a
little bit of everything when they’re eating their salad. So I’m running my knife down
the length of the avocado. Then I’ll spin the half and
cut it into half-inch cubes. We have one avocado down, and now I’m gonna prep the second avocado the exact same way. Time to move on to our hard-boiled eggs. So like the avocado, we also want to cut these
into half-inch pieces. So I’m just gonna take
my knife, halve the eggs, perfectly hard-boiled, love that, cut them into quarters, and then I will run my
knife across the eggs. This is a very aesthetically
pleasing salad, so having all of the
ingredients cut uniform is just gonna make it look very nice. And it’s also bite-sized,
so it’s easy to eat. So now I’m gonna transfer
our eggs to another bowl. Our fully cooked chicken is
now cool enough to handle, so I’ll transfer it to our cutting board. And again, we want to cut these into lovely half-inch pieces. So I’m gonna go lengthwise first, straight across the chicken,
cut these pieces into strips. So you can absolutely
cook your chicken breast a day ahead of time, but I would wait until
you’re ready to serve to cut your chicken
into bite-sized pieces. Okay, so I’m gonna continue cutting the rest of my chicken breasts, and then we can start
to assemble our salad. Now, this is a Cobb salad after all. So now we’re gonna talk
about our salad greens. Here I have eight cups of romaine lettuce that I have cleaned and
torn into bite-sized pieces, as well as four cups of baby arugula. Now, watercress is
traditional in a Cobb salad, but it can be kind of hard to
find in your grocery store. So you can certainly use
it if you can find it, but if not, you can substitute
for baby arugula or chicory or curly endive, or anything that has that bitter, peppery accent to the
sweetness of the romaine. A Cobb salad is what’s
known as a composed salad. So we’re not gonna take
all these ingredients and toss them in a
gigantic bowl altogether. We’re instead going to
arrange them on a big platter. So you wanna make sure that
you have a nice big platter. And since we’re not tossing all
of our ingredients together, we wanna make sure that each
component is well-seasoned. So we’re gonna dress them individually before we add them to our
platter, starting with our greens. You got a nice big platter; you’re gonna want a nice big bowl as well. We’re gonna combine our romaine and our arugula. Some of our vinaigrette
recipes are fully emulsified. This is not one of those vinaigrettes, so you wanna make sure that
you give it a good shake to reincorporate all those ingredients. So I’m gonna add five
tablespoons of our vinaigrette right to our greens, and using my tongs here, give them a toss. We’re using our tongs to both combine our
arugula and our romaine and also to ensure that all of the greens are evenly coated in that dressing. And if you take a look at these greens, you can see that they are nice and shiny. They’re very lightly coated. They’re not overdressed, which is exactly what
you want for this salad, and really, any salad that
you’re making at home. Okay, now to begin our platter work, we’re gonna make this
the big bed of greens across the base of our platter. It’s really nice to
have two types of greens when you’re making a salad. You can see the different
shapes of the arugula sticking out of the romaine; just adds another dimension to this salad. It’s like a Tempur-Pedic mattress for all of our ingredients. Now, I don’t wanna get rid of this bowl that I tossed my greens in. There’s a nice little
coating of the dressing, and we’re gonna utilize that as we toss our other components, starting with our cubed chicken. So again, this is those
three chicken breasts that we cut into half-inch cubes. And now we’re going to
add four tablespoons of our vinaigrette. Now just give this a toss
with a nice big spoon to ensure that all that
chicken is evenly coated. We’re going to add these in different rows across the top of our greens. So starting with our chicken, line our chicken up across the top. Next, we’re gonna season
our grape tomatoes that we’ve halved. Back in the same bowl, just gonna add one tablespoon
of our vinaigrette, give these a toss as well. And we’ll arrange the
tomatoes on the opposite end from our chicken. Now, we aren’t going to toss
our eggs and our avocado just because they are very soft, and if we were to stir in our vinaigrette with those ingredients, they would kind of start to
muddy, get kind of mushy. We wanna keep them bright, beautiful, especially ’cause we put
that work into cutting them into those half-inch cubes. So instead, we’re gonna
get rid of this bowl and align the eggs right
next to the chicken. So much protein in the
salad, which I love. And next, we have our avocado, our nice creamy avocado that we’ve cubed. I mean, as the salad is coming together, you can just see that
this is hearty enough for a main course. Now, we didn’t toss our
avocado and our egg, but we certainly do wanna season it. So I have a little bit
more of our vinaigrette that I’m gonna drizzle right on top. Now, this is already stunning, (laughs) but we do have a few more
components to sprinkle on top, starting with our bacon. Remember, we have our crispy bacon, and this is gonna add that nice
crunch, that salty element. Now, we have two more components. And this might feel like
a lot of components, but one thing that I learned was that you can use the acronym EAT COBB. You have your egg, your
avocado, your tomato, your chicken, your onion. In this case, it’s three
tablespoons of minced chives, sprinkled right on top. Just adds a little pop of freshness, little slight mild onion
flavor; it’s really nice here. The first B is our bacon. And for the final B, some blue cheese. I have some crumbled blue cheese. Just to make crumbling your
cheese that much easier, just pop it in the
freezer for a few minutes before you do it. That added tang, that creaminess, it just wakes everything up. Holy hearty salad. (laughs) Talk about a salad showstopper. There may be a lot of components to this classic, dinner-worthy salad, but now you’ve got the tools
you need to manage them, and the results are so worth it. Creamy, crunchy, crispy, and fresh. The Cobb salad really has it all. Now that you know how to
assemble a composed salad, you’re ready to take the next step. And with ATK Classes, you’ll get access to a
wide variety of lessons filled with masterful
techniques, helpful videos, and step-by-step photos, from knife skills and
making hand-rolled pasta to baking and frosting incredible
cakes and so much more. Download the America’s Test Kitchen app and start learning with ATK Classes today.