The Allis Chopped Salad is my all-time favorite salad. And since I can’t have lunch at The Allis everyday, I recreated the recipe so that I could make it at home. This salad has the perfect combination of freshly chopped vegetables and protein.
Do you ever order the same thing at a restaurant again and again? I can be a creature of habit. At Le Pain Quotidian I always get the Mushroom and Goat Cheese Omelet. When I am at The Allis, I get The Allis Chopped Salad. Every. Single. Time. I love this salad because it has a lot of ingredients. It is rare that I love a salad, but the Allis Copped Salad has my heart. So much so that I had to recreate it and share it with you, since it isn’t fair that you can only get this salad in Chicago.
As the Allis Chopped Salad’s biggest fan, I can tell you that they have made some changes to the salad. My favorite version is made with cubed cheddar, beets, red bell pepper, egg, romaine, bacon, chicken, and cucumber. Right now, the salad is made with feta instead of cheddar, but if you ask really nicely they will use cheddar instead of feta. At one point the salad was made with corn, feta, beets, tomato, romaine, and bacon. Sometimes spring onion is involved. It has always come with a creamy mild ranch dressing. So yes, you can feel free to mix and match the ingredients and make it however you like.
One of the reasons why this salad is so good is that all of the ingredients are finely chopped, which means you get a little bit of everything in each bite.
Let’s talk about beets. They are messy and roasting beets just for a salad seems like a lot of work. This is where Trader Joe’s comes to the rescue! They sell cooked, peeled, vacuum sealed beets! Look for them in the vegetable section. Now you can add beets to your salads without the chore of cooking them yourself! Since the beets come vacuum sealed, the beets can be kept in your fridge for about 6 months – so you can stock up next time you are TJs. Don’t you feel like Trader Joe’s is lovingly looking out for you sometimes? (No, Trader Joe’s is not sponsoring this).
The red pepper on the salad isn’t raw, and it isn’t soft and roasted. It is lightly cooked. I accomplished this by very quickly roasting the bell pepper. I kept it over the flame for only about 3 minutes, scraped off any charred skin, and then chopped the pepper. The final result was just what I was hoping for.
I used rotisserie chicken, because it is one of my favorite timesaving tricks. You could use leftover chicken too. Speaking of saving time, did you know that you can buy bags of a dozen hard boiled eggs? I know, it sounds weird at first, but they are my husband’s favorite snack.
I didn’t go through the effort of making salad dressing. You can if you like, but there are so many delicious salad dressings that you can buy, so I think it is better to save the time and mess of making it from scratch. I do have a rule when it comes to salad dressing, I prefer to buy salad dressing from the refrigerated section (if it is a creamy dressing) because I question self stable dressings. I am partial to Bolthouse Farms. No, they (unfortunately) aren’t sponsoring this blog post, but I like that their dressings are lower in fat and calories, and made with yogurt. I recommend the classic ranch and the creamy roasted garlic dressings. If you have salad dressing recommendations, I would love to hear them!
Allis Chopped Salad
Ingredients
- 2 slices of Bacon
- 1 1/2 cups Greens pick your favorite
- 1 Red Bell Pepper
- 1/4 cup diced Chicken Breast
- 1 Hard Boiled Egg
- 1 Beet cooked and peeled
- 1/4 cup diced Cucumber
- 1/4 cup cubed Cheddar Cheese I love Cabot Cheddar
- 2-3 tablespoons Ranch or Roasted Garlic Dressing
Instructions
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First you need to cook the bacon. I like to do this in the oven. Heat your oven to 400 degrees, and place the bacon on a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil. Cook the bacon for about 8-12 minutes, until it is as crispy as you like it. Then remove the bacon from the pan, blot it with paper towels to remove the excess fat, and let it cool.
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While the bacon cooks, place the bell pepper directly over a gas burner on the stove, and roast for 3 minutes, rotating the pepper every minute using tongs. Let the pepper cool, then use a butter knife to scrape any charred skin off of the pepper. Then finely dice the pepper. You won't need all of it, save the rest for another salad.
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Chop the bacon, the hard boiled egg, and the beet.
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Chop the greens and place them in the bottom of a shallow bowl. Then add the chopped bacon, bell pepper, chicken, egg, beet, cucumber, and cheddar cheese. Drizzle the dressing over the top and eat.
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