Classic Wedge Salad
Ice-cold lettuce, shatteringly crisp oven-rendered bacon, and a lightly funky herbed bleu cheese dressing make this salad one of the only steakhouse dishes that's actually worth the effort to make at home.
Why This Wedge Salad Recipe Delivers
Wedge salad is an old-fashioned dish that's been badly misrepresented in the modern era. Like most of my recipes, my version aims to cut what isn't working and dial up what makes it genuinely great.
That starts with how the salad is built. The trad wedge shape acts as a pitched roof — all the good stuff slides right off and onto the plate, making it awkward to eat and the flavors disjointed. I found a way to bring some architectural finesse to the build so you experience all the smaller components at once, as a unified whole.
When this dish is done properly, it hits the ceiling of what’s possible for enjoyment of a salad.
Brian's Pro Tips
Rinse Your Diced Red Onion - After you brunoise the red onion, put it in a fine mesh strainer and run cold water over it for about 30 seconds. This flushes out most of the sulfurous compounds that cause onion breath and that lingering harsh aftertaste.
Seed the Tomato Before You Dice -While dicing the tomatoes, remove as much of the watery seed gel as possible. This isn't just cosmetic. That gel will dilute the dressing, making it runny, and the salad will be a little sloppy, and it will look bad too.
Dress in a Bowl, Plate After - Put the chilled wedge in a deep bowl and sauce it generously in there first. The bowl catches all the dressing, tomatoes, onion, so nothing goes to waste and the wedge gets fully coated on all sides. Then transfer it to the plate. This is the difference between a wedge that eats like a dream and one with everything pooled around it that's kind of a bummer to eat.
Oven-Rendered Bacon - Cooking bacon in the oven at 350°F instead of a skillet solves every problem pan-frying creates. You get even heat from all sides, so the strips render uniformly from edge to edge with no hot spots or curling. Because the bacon lies flat on a parchment-lined sheet tray, it comes out in perfectly flat, shatteringly crisp strips every time
Freezer-Blasting the Iceberg -Wrapping the prepped wedges of iceberg in a damp paper towel and parking them in the freezer for 15 minutes makes them extra stiff and super chilled. So when you take a bite, you not only get to have the pleasure of EXTREMELY COLD iceberg, you also get a very tight satisfying crunch that explodes lettuce juice into your mouth. It makes a big difference.
Key Ingredient Notes
Iceberg Lettuce
Iceberg has a certain wetness to it that a lot of people complain about. In my view, that's a feature not a bug. When you bite into a cold wedge you get a rush of cold moisture that cuts right through the richness of the dressing. No other lettuce does this. Butter lettuce is too tender. Mixed greens have no structure. And romaine heads aren't as tight or as loaded with moisture.
Fresh Dill and Chives
Fresh dill and chives bring grassy brightness that cuts through the richness of the bleu cheese base and signals that this dressing is homemade. This herb-forward quality is one of the things that separates this from a bottle of Hidden Valley.
Full ingredient list and amounts listed in the recipe below.
RECIPE
COOK TIME 30 min YIELD 4 servings
Ingredients
For the Herbed Bleu Cheese Dressing:
85 g (5 ¾ Tbsp) buttermilk
35 g ( 2 ½ Tbsp) sour cream
150 g ( ⅔ cup) mayonnaise (Duke's strongly preferred)
5 g (1 tsp) garlic powder
5 g (1 tsp) onion powder
2 g (¼ tsp) salt
35 g ( ¼ cup) bleu cheese, very finely chopped
8 g ( 3 Tbsp) fresh dill, chopped
8 g ( 3 Tbsp) fresh chives, sliced
For the Salad:
450g (1 lb) regular-sliced bacon
1 large head iceberg lettuce, quartered
1 red onion, brunoise diced and rinsed
1 beefsteak tomato, seeds removed, brunoise diced
Extra bleu cheese crumbles, for topping
Fresh chives and picked dill, for garnish
Instructions
1.Render the Bacon. Preheat your oven to 350°F/175°C. Arrange the strips of regular-sliced bacon in a single layer on a parchment-lined rimmed sheet tray,
2.Slide it into the oven and bake for 18–25 minutes or until the bacon is deeply reddish brown and stiff to the touch. You'll know it's done when the strips are uniformly dark and there's no translucent, soft fat remaining. Pull the tray and immediately prop one end up so the fat drains away from the strips. Let them cool completely.
Can you use thick-cut bacon? You can, but it won't get that shattering crisp texture. Increase the bake time by 5–10 minutes and accept that the bacon will eat a little more like a piece of meat than a bacon bit.
3. Make the Herbed Bleu Cheese Dressing. In a medium bowl, whisk together buttermilk, sour cream, mayo, garlic powder, onion powder, fresh minced chives, chopped fresh dill and salt.
4.Add 35g of finely chopped bleu cheese and fold it in until it’s well incorporated.
Can you make this dressing ahead? Yes and it actually gets better. The buttermilk's lactic acid softens the bleu cheese as it sits and all the flavors meld together. Make it up to 3 days ahead and store covered in the fridge.
5. Prep and Chill the Wedge. Quarter the iceberg head. Remove the heavy dense core from each wedge, then peel away any loose, wilted outer leaves and the inner 3 layers or so to create a flat, valley-like surface down the center of each wedge. Cover the wedges in a damp paper towel and place in the freezer for 10-15 minutes.
Why remove the inner layers? By pulling the very center out, you create a flat channel that holds dressing and toppings in place instead of letting them roll off a rounded surface onto the plate.
Won't it freeze? No. Ten minutes isn't enough to freeze the water inside the cells … it's just enough to make the lettuce explosively crisp and ice-cold in a way the fridge alone can't achieve.
6. Prep the Toppings
Dice your cooked bacon.
Brunoise the red onion (very small dice), then rinse it in a strainer under cold water for 30 seconds and pat dry.
Small dice the tomatoes, and remove excessive tomato seeds and gel.
6. Assemble and Serve. Pull the wedges from the freezer. Place one in a deep bowl and sauce it generously with the bleu cheese dressing, making sure to get some in between the layers of the lettuce.
Then layer on the toppings: tomatoes, diced bacon, red onion, and bleu cheese crumbles, more chives, and dill.
Spoon a small amount of dressing directly onto your serving plate, then transfer the dressed wedge on top. Finish with more dressing and bacon.
Final Thoughts on Serving:
Don’t under dress this salad. Underdressing it and serving it less than ice cold temp. A wedge salad is supposed to be indulgent and ice-cold. Be generous with the dressing — this is not a light salad — and make sure the lettuce was in the freezer. Skip either of those and you're just eating a head of lettuce with some stuff on top.
Want to add protein to make this a meal? Grilled chicken, sliced seared steak, or blackened shrimp all work. Add the protein last, leaning against the wedge, so it doesn't crush the structure. This turns a side into a $24 restaurant entrée.
Storage & Make-Ahead
The dressing keeps for up to 5 days in the fridge
The bacon can be rendered up to 3 days ahead. Store it in the fridge
Once assembled, a wedge salad doesn't store. The dressing breaks down the iceberg almost immediately once it's dressed. This is a build-and-eat dish. But with the dressing made, bacon rendered, and toppings prepped, assembly is literally two minutes. That's the move if you're making it for guests. Do all the prep ahead and assemble right before you serve.
My Go-To Gear
The only correct way to render bacon. A rimmed tray keeps everything contained, heats evenly, and is easy to tilt to drain the fat off the bacon.
I swear by parchment sheets over rolls. Parchment makes cleaning the greasy sheet tray easier, but sheets over rolls for all the reasons. They’re roughly the same price as a roll, lay flat, and you don’t have to struggle with awkwardly tearing them using the flimsy serrated box edge.