Chopped Wedge Salad

Look, Wedge Salads are delicious — thanks to a medley of crunchy iceberg lettuce, tangy blue cheese, salty bacon, and fresh juicy tomatoes. But — and this is a big but — they are super impractical to eat. You’re served a giant triangle of lettuce on a plate that’s topped with a lot of delicious things, but how do you get those delicious things into every bite? And furthermore, how do you even get it into your mouth without making a mess? It’s a classic and it’s an incredibly tasty combo of ingredients but I’ve always felt that the delivery left a lot to be desired.

Bea’s Blueberry Sheet Cake
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But no matter, now we have this Chopped Wedge Salad. See, it has all of the flavor you know and love from a classic Wedge Salad, but it’s not served to you as a wedge at all. Instead, it’s allll bite-sized so you can enjoy every last delicious morsel with ease.

This seems like a no-brainer. All of the pros about Wedge Salad without the one con — that wedge. The base still features plenty of iceberg lettuce, because that’s a crisp and crunchy must for a Wedge Salad, but it’s rounded out with the softer and more flavorful romaine. (In other words, you get the best of both worlds.)

One great lettuce tip: If you ever want to chop and rinse your lettuce ahead of time, you can then dry it well and store it in a ziptop bag that’s lined with two paper towels. It keeps the lettuce nice and crisp for a good long while, sometimes up to a week!

The other components probably look familiar here. There’s halved cherry tomatoes, crisp salty bacon, and a generous crumbling of blue cheese. Now, normally blue cheese is not my go-to cheese, but it absolutely belongs on a Wedge Salad — its salty bite just works so well with all the other components.

And then there’s the dressing. This isn’t a situation where you’re going to squeeze a store-bought bottle of ranch over your finished salad. That just wouldn’t feel special and this is, after all, a special salad. Besides, homemade dressings are truly a breeze to make and the results are always leaps and bounds above anything you can get in a store. Here, you’ll simply whisk together some buttermilk, mayo, and sour cream with some fresh chives, garlic powder, lemon juice, Worcestershire, and a bit more of that signature blue cheese. It’s creamy, it’s salty, and it goes perfectly with all of those cool and crunchy greens.

This is dressed up enough for a dinner party (and certainly easier to eat than the original) but casual enough for a backyard barbecue, and I can promise that it’ll be a sure crowd-pleaser. I haven’t met a single soul who doesn’t love this salad, even if they claim they aren’t a blue cheese fan.

Ingredients