I tried Daphne Oz’s viral Caesar salad recipe and my family couldn’t stop eating it

As a child, Daphne Oz recalls going to her grandmother’s house to eat Caesar salad.

“We would always have my grandmother’s famous Caesar salad – she made a Caesar salad like no other in the world, and she made this huge wooden bowl,” Oz says, “a trough out of it. “

Eat Your Heart Out: No-Fuss Food to Celebrate Eating Clean, co-host and author of The Good Dish, shared the recipe on her website and Instagram, and the video of her making her own giant wooden bowl Caesar salad has received 3 million views.

“Caesar salad is probably on our table at least once a week,” Ozzy told Yahoo Life. “Honestly, it’s like, she gave me the recipe and I gave it to everyone. It’s like a totally viral Caesar salad, which makes total sense.”

“Obviously, she’s my grandmother, so I always thought it was the best salad ever, but people have confirmed that it’s actually the best Caesar salad ever,” she continued. “It’s very good: garlicky, lemony, very strong. It’s not as thick and rich as some Caesar salad dressings, but it has a lot of pecan Romano, which is great.”

Intrigued by Oz’s rave reviews, I decided to try her recipe in my own kitchen. The ingredients are simple: garlic, anchovies, lemon juice, olive oil and lots of delicious cheese. Like Oz and her grandmother before her, I found a large wooden salad bowl in the pantry and got to work.

After churning a few cloves of garlic into a cream (chopped and broken down with salt), I tossed them into my bowl along with the dry mustard, prickly bergamot, their brine and anchovies. Then it was time to get messy: the magic of this salad dressing is how much you mash these ingredients into a paste with a fork in the bottom of the bowl.

Next comes the lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, olive oil and honey. Once everything was mixed together, like a salad dressing, I added a lot of grated Parmesan cheese. Another amazing trick I learned from my grandmother in Oz’s IGTV video tutorial: cover the dressing with an overturned plate, place the chopped long-leaf lettuce on the plate, and put the whole thing back in the fridge until it’s ready to serve.

The plate acts as a barrier between the dressing and the lettuce to keep things from getting soggy. When it’s dinner time, all I have to do is get the plate out and throw my long-leaf lettuce into the cheese, lemony, garlicky goodness.

When I threw in the salad, I added chunks of Parmesan cheese as well as salt and pepper. No croutons were needed, and even the grilled chicken we were going to put on top paled in comparison to the deliciousness of this salad. True confession: I’m not interested in salads, but even I couldn’t stop eating this one.

Oz’s Caesar salad is definitely going into my summer meal rotation. The dressing is light and fresh: full of garlic flavor and the perfect amount of saltiness. I can’t wait to make this for my dinner guests – I know they’ll want the recipe and I’ll be sure to point them right back to the source.

Grandma Daphne Oz’s Eggless Caesar Salad
Courtesy of Daphne Oz

INGREDIENTS.
4 cloves garlic, cream

1 teaspoon dry mustard

1 tablespoon prickly shamrock, brine

4 anchovies, chopped

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

Juice of 3 lemons

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

½ cup olive oil (more to taste)

½ teaspoon honey (optional)

½ cup grated parmesan cheese (or pecorino if you prefer a more savory flavor)

½ cup shaved Parmesan cheese

3 long-leaf lettuce hearts, torn or chopped

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Instructions.
In the bottom of a salad bowl (preferably a giant wooden bowl), mash the creamed garlic, mustard, prickly shamrock and anchovies with the back of a fork until well blended.
Add a large pinch of coarse salt and a pinch of pepper and continue mashing for a minute to form a textured paste.
Add the red wine vinegar, lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce and stir to combine.
While you stir to emulsify the dressing, slowly drizzle on the olive oil.
Taste for salt and pepper, add honey if desired, then add the grated cheese and stir to combine.
Just before serving, add the romaine lettuce to the bowl. Toss with the dressing and sprinkle the shaved cheese on top. Serve and enjoy.