A classic Cobb Salad cannot be beat!

Who doesn’t love a salad loaded with all the good stuff?! Our Loaded Italian Salad is one of my favorites for feeding a big crowd when I do an Italian Night Dinner. A classic Cobb Salad is another favorite loaded with creamy blue cheese crumbles, crispy bacon, cooked chicken, hard boiled eggs and don’t forget the lettuce that makes this a salad (wink.wink.). A salad so loaded that it is the complete meal and not just something you serve on the side.

Why is it called a Cobb Salad?

The name for this salad salad originated in the Brown Derby restaurant in Hollywood California in 1929. It is said that the salad was named after Ty Cobb’s cousin Robert Cobb who was the owner of the restaurant at the time.

Cobb Salad ingredients:

roasted or grilled chicken
crispy cooked bacon pieces
hard boiled egg
avocado
blue cheese crumbles (or gorgonzola cheese)
cherry tomatoes
chopped green lettuce (like romaine, ice berg, green leaf or red leaf lettuce)
flat leaf parsley (*optional garnish)

How to make a Cobb Salad:

The key to a good Cobb salad is to chop all the ingredients up small so that you can capture all the flavors with every bite. Once everything is chopped up, you can add them to your serving plates or one big platter like we have done here. When ready to serve, we like to add single servings to a big bowl and toss it with the salad dressing. Sometimes culinary scissors are helpful in cutting things up even smaller for eating.

1-Make the salad dressing. Our Homemade Ranch Dressing is always a favorite.
2-Prepare the greens. Chop, wash and chill all the lettuce for the salad. We love to store the lettuce in the salad spinner after all the water is removed. It works like a crisper in the fridge.
3-Layer on the ingredients: Add the chilled chopped lettuce first. Arrange the chopped chicken, blue cheese crumbles, sliced hard boiled egg, crumbled bacon, avocado and tomatoes. Sprinkle with a garnish of finely diced flat leaf parsley.
4-Toss and Serve: In a large bowl, toss each serving with the dressing before serving. Use kitchen shears to chop things up even smaller if preferred.

Make ahead Cobb Salad:

There are so many things you can prep ahead when making a Cobb Salad.
–Hard boil the eggs: If you are going to hard boil few eggs for this salad, you might as well hard boil a bunch, they make a great grab and go protein snack when you need it. I’ve found that hard boiled eggs peel so much easier when you peel them right after they cook. So peel and chill all of the hard boiled eggs, ready for when you need them
–Cook all the bacon: have all the bacon precooked. We love the oven baked method for bacon. Store it in the fridge.
–Rotisserie Chicken: Rotisserie chicken is such a great shortcut for this salad. We like to get all the meat off the chicken (chopped, shredded or sliced) before chilling in the fridge, it’s so much easier.
–Chop up all the things: most of the fresh ingredients like the avocados and tomatoes need to be prepped just right before serving.
–Make the entire salad and keep in the fridge for a few hours before serving. Only add the avocado right before serving.

Precooked bacon vs. cooking bacon at home:

We have tried that bag of precooked bacon bits from Costco a few times and we don’t love it. It seems to have a lot of big gross fatty chewy chunks of bacon. We prefer to cook the bacon ourselves. Bacon cooked in the oven at home is so simple. You can either freeze after it’s cooked or keep it in the fridge. It surprisingly lasts a long time in the fridge once cooked, and even longer in the freezer.

What’s the difference between a Cobb salad and a Chef salad?

A chef salad and Cobb salad are pretty similar with only a few different ingredients. They both have hard boiled eggs, meats and cheese, but the Cobb salad has the addition of tomatoes and avocado.

What kind of salad dressing do you serve with a Cobb Salad?

A classic red wine vinaigrette is the most common salad dressing to go with a Cobb salad, but really you can use your favorite salad dressing. We are using our favorite homemade ranch dressing, it’s the best! …plus so easy to make, and homemade is ALWAYS better than store bought. Our homemade blue cheese would also be so good on this.