Roasted Veggie Caesar Salad

I love making Caesar salad for guests when I host dinner parties. It’s a guaranteed crowd-pleaser that’s relatively easy to assemble. But as with many of the dishes I make, I enjoy incorporating my own twist on the standard version. A traditional Caesar salad is all about the balance of the garlicky, savory dressing with crisp lettuce, salty Parmesan cheese and crunchy croutons. It is near perfect in its simplicity, but when those elements are combined with sweet, roasted summer vegetables, the classic salad is transformed into a robust, eye-catching dish that's perfect for a light summer dinner at home, a fancy dinner party, or a casual cookout. 

In this fun, reimagined Caesar, I’ve taken the core elements of the classic salad and adjusted them slightly: Instead of crunchy romaine, I use tender leaf lettuce, and I swap the classic egg-emulsified Caesar dressing for an easy and light Caesar vinaigrette that doubles as a marinade for the vegetables. This is all tossed together with a medley of hearty roasted vegetables that includes broccolini, cremini mushrooms, red bell pepper, and onion. Here are a few tips for making my roasted vegetable Caesar salad at home.

Tips for a Savory and Satisfying Roasted Vegetable Caesar Salad

Choose vegetables that cook at the same rate and add a variety of flavors to the salad. When developing this recipe, I tested a variety of vegetables to land on the ones I've included in my recipe below. While roasted zucchini and tomatoes were delicious on their own, their high moisture content made the final salad too watery. I also tried versions with roasted potatoes and sweet potatoes, but they were too substantial and filling for the summery salad I was looking for, and the tender, fluffy potatoes didn’t provide the crisp texture that was lost without the romaine. 

After many batches of roasting, I selected a mixture of broccolini, red bell pepper, yellow onion, and cremini mushrooms. This blend of vegetables provides a balance of complex flavors when roasted—the broccolini and mushrooms get toasty and slightly charred while the natural sweetness of the onions and peppers is enhanced. When these veggies are tossed with lettuce, the Caesar vinaigrette, and shaved Parmesan, you get an alternative to the classic Caesar that is perfect for a light summer meal.

Skip the classic emulsified Caesar dressing and make a vinaigrette instead. The recipe starts by making a homemade Caesar vinaigrette. I say vinaigrette instead of dressing because it uses only mustard as the emulsifier instead of egg yolk, which is used in classic Caesar salad dressing. It makes for a lighter vinaigrette that can be used two ways: to season the chopped vegetables before roasting and to dress the salad before serving. Not only do I prefer the lighter flavor of this vinaigrette with the final dish, there's also a practical reason to skip the egg yolk: Since some of the vinaigrette is tossed with the vegetables before they are cooked, including egg yolk would result in cooked egg clinging to your roasted vegetables—not what you want in a salad!

Preheat the baking sheet for better browning on the vegetables. Roasting deepens the vegetables’ flavors and brings out their sweet, savory notes. The cooking process concentrates the flavor by evaporating moisture, converting its complex carbohydrates to sugars, then caramelizing those sugars. This is the Maillard reaction—the series of chemical reactions that occur when proteins and sugars in food are transformed by heat—and it helps produce complex, bittersweet flavors. To ensure this process occurs, and that the Maillard reaction produces a well browned flavorful exterior at the same rate as the interior of vegetables turn tender-crisp, get your rimmed baking sheet hot in the oven before adding the vegetables to jump-start the browning. The broccolini florets, chopped mushrooms, bell pepper, and onions are small enough that, assuming you don't overcrowd the baking sheet, they will sizzle and sear on contact with the hot baking sheet.

Substitute tender leaf lettuce for the classic romaine. The lettuce selection here is important. I wanted greens that could hold up to a pungent dressing and the roasted summer vegetables, but without the crunch of romaine, to allow the texture of the roasted vegetables to shine. I found that baby green leaf lettuce is perfectly crisp yet tender. I have a preferred local brand of greenhouse-grown baby greens that I use, but I recommend looking in your grocery store or local farmers market for lettuce that is substantial enough to not get lost in the roasted vegetables, yet not so hearty (like kale or escarole) that it overpowers the salad. Gem lettuce and baby romaine are great options for this salad.

Don’t skimp on the Parmesan cheese. For a salty, savory bite, whisk grated Parmesan into the vinaigrette and also finish the salad with larger shards of cheese. I recommend using a vegetable peeler to shave long, thin pieces of salty Parmesan cheese onto the tossed salad. The cheese is more than just a garnish. It’s a substantial bite that ties together the pungent Caesar vinaigrette with the sweet and slightly toasty roasted vegetables. The final salad may not look like a classic Caesar, but I’d argue that it might taste even better than the original.