Cobb Salad is a healthy protein filled dinner idea full of delicious meats and veggies.
Cobb salad is one of my favorite things to order at a restaurant. It’s great as a standalone meal or delicious with a big bowl of hot soup. I think it goes especially well with tomato soup. This recipe is pretty classic using three proteins and salad veggies and dressed with a red wine vinaigrette, but one of the great things about cobb salad is that you can add just about anything you like!
Cobb Salad Ingredients
- Lettuce – we used a mixture of romaine lettuce and spinach leaves. Most cobb salads also contain iceberg lettuce, but we skipped it due to the lack of nutritional value. You can also add endive and water cress.
- Chicken – grilled chicken breast goes perfectly. We like to have cooked chicken breast in the freezer so we can make up meals quickly!
- Egg – hard boiled egg! We made our hard boiled eggs in the instant pot, but you can also make hard boiled eggs on the stovetop.
- Bacon – Another ingredient I like to have on hand all the time. We make our bacon in the oven and then keep it in the freezer. So convenient!
- Avocado – the perfectly ripe avocado is hard to come by, but if you pull the nub off the top of an avocado and check the flesh just below, that should indicate whether it is ready to eat. Look for a nice deep green.
- Blue cheese – Roquefort is traditionally called for in cobb salad, but any good blue cheese will suffice.
- Tomato – I like to use cherry tomatoes because they’re especially sweet and delicious.
- Onion – Our cobb salad contains both thinly sliced red onion and scallions.
What kind of dressing is on Cobb Salad?
Cobb salad is usually dressed with a simple red wine vinaigrette that consists of olive oil, red wine vinegar, dijon mustard, garlic, salt, and pepper.
That said, cobb salad is delicious with just about any type of dressing. I’m especially partial to our creamy blue cheese dressing and our buttermilk ranch dressing if I’m not in the mood for a vinaigrette.
What is the difference between a Chef and a Cobb salad?
The difference between a chef salad and a cobb salad is the type of cheese (blue cheese on a cobb salad and shredded cheese like Swiss or sharp cheddar on the chef salad, as well as the inclusion of avocado on the cobb salad.
The chef salad also often contains deli meat wherein the cobb salad will sometimes contain cubed ham, but not sliced lunch meat. The cobb salad was purportedly invented at the Hollywood Brown Derby Restaurant and named after the chef, Robert Howard Cobb. source
Confession – for the longest time, I thought this salad was named because it has corn from the cobb as an ingredient. Turns out, there’s no corn in this salad (although you could totally add some), and cob isn’t even spelled the same way!
How healthy is a Cobb Salad?
Cobb salads are very healthy, especially when dressed with a light red wine vinaigrette. The cobb salad is gluten free, grain free, paleo friendly, and full of healthy proteins, fats, and colorful vegetables.
How do you eat a Cobb Salad?
You eat a cobb salad by tossing it gently with the dressing, then dividing it equally among the diners. The presentation of the cobb salad is typically in a fashion that the ingredients are laid separately on the bed of lettuce, so it is important to toss the salad before serving in order to evenly distribute everything.
Alternatively, you can prepare each dish on it’s own with the ingredients laid on top of the lettuce and allow the diners to mix up the meat and veggies.
More Amazing Salad Recipes
- Strawberry Spinach Salad
- Apple Walnut Blue Cheese Salad
- Macaroni Tuna Salad Recipe
- Steak Salad with Goat Cheese and Cranberries
- Antipasto Salad
Tools we love
- OXO Good Grips Green Salad Spinner – Make sure your salad isn’t watered down by using this OXO salad spinner. We love it for spinning our broccoli before roasting too!
- Anchor Hocking Glass Cruet With Stopper – Are you obsessed with making your own salad dressings like I am? You’ll need a dozen or so of these. Yassssss.
- Lipper International Small Bamboo Bowls, Set of 4 – Children of the eighties will be especially nostalgic for wooden salad bowls. Why did we always eat salad out of wooden bowls? I don’t know, but P.S. I love it.
- Lipper International Bamboo Salad Bowl – You’d better believe we’re serving the salad from a wooden bowl too!
How to Make Cobb Salad
Cobb Salad
Ingredients
- 1 cup chopped romaine lettuce
- 1 cup chopped spinach leaves
- ¼ cup chopped cooked chicken breast
- ¼ cup chopped hard boiled eggs
- ¼ cup crumbled bacon
- ¼ cup crumbled blue cheese
- ¼ cup chopped tomato
- ⅛ cup diced red onion
- ⅛ cup diced scallion
- 1/2 - 1/4 avocado sliced or chopped
Instructions
- Place lettuce in a bowl, then lay ingredients separately over top of lettuce.
- Top with your choice of dressing (I’m partial to red wine vinaigrette).
- Enjoy!
Sara says
Cobb salad is one of my favorite recipes too but I always get it at restaurants, can’t wait to try your recipe and make it at home instead!
Ashley Fehr says
This is the BEST Cobb Salad! The tips are so helpful!
Taylor F says
I don’t see the avocado listed in the recipe ingredients. How much did you use?
April says
oops! i’ll fix it now! i like about 1/4 – 1/2 an avocado per salad. 🙂