Cobb Salad with Homemade Ranch Dressing

I wanted to make a Cobb salad with a homemade buttermilk ranch dressing with lots of fresh herbs and garlic, so that’s exactly what I did.

I was recently at a cafe and I ordered a Cobb Salad with ranch, and I’m pretty particular about my dressings since they really make the salad. Their ranch was very thick and made with chemicals that I could taste.

Here’s how to make the Homemade Ranch Dressing:

I started by chopping up my garlic and I always press it with my knife to really get the flavors out, then I chopped up my fresh herbs, dill, chives and parsley. The dressing comes together so effortlessly. In a bowl I added sour cream and enough buttermilk to make it the consistency that I liked before adding all my herbs, garlic and spices, including onion powder, smoked paprika, salt and pepper. I popped that into the fridge to let the flavors infuse while I moved on to tenderizing my chicken breasts and quickly marinating them in more of the buttermilk that I seasoned. Ideally you would let this sit for several hours or overnight. I also have a pot on the stove with boiling water to make a few hard boiled eggs.

In the mean time I prepared my panko crust with the same seasonings and pan fried the chicken in some olive oil. As the chicken rested, I cooked up some applewood smoked bacon and started prepping my vegetables for my salad. A traditional Cobb salad has avocados, but mine were not ripe yet, so I substituted persian cucumbers instead. Then moved on to chopping my tomatoes, grating some raw milk Gruyere cheese, which has been my go-to cheese of late, chopping the bacon and hardboiled eggs. I plated everything over a bed of mixed baby greens, but I decided after dressing it that I preferred a chopped salad instead, so I tossed everything together and enjoyed this incredibly delicious salad with the creamy herbed ranch dressing.

It feels so good when you can cook meals like this at home. It’s so much better than eating out.