The secret to a good Cobb salad is the knife work. Cut every topping to the same size, about a half-inch dice, so a single forkful can hold chicken, bacon, egg, avocado, tomato and blue cheese at once. Chop the lettuce a little larger, slice the chives fine, and lay each ingredient in its own row over the greens.
When the pieces are uneven, the salad falls apart into separate courses: a chunk of chicken here, a slab of egg there. When they match, the salad eats as one dish, which is the whole idea.
What goes in a Cobb
The Cobb salad is usually credited to Bob Cobb, who ran the Brown Derby restaurants and is said to have assembled it late one night in 1937 at the Hollywood Brown Derby. Accounts differ, and some credit a chef in his kitchen instead. His biography from the Society for American Baseball Research (Cobb was also one of the owners of the Hollywood Stars, a Pacific Coast League baseball team) lists the ingredients as chopped romaine lettuce, tomato, bacon, chicken breast, hard-boiled egg, avocado, chives and blue cheese, dressed with a red wine vinaigrette and laid out on the plate in neat rows.
That list is the cutting plan. Six of those ingredients get the same half-inch dice. The romaine and the chives are cut differently because of what they are.
Plan the order of work
A Cobb salad takes more knife work than most salads. Doing it in the right order keeps the board clean, the avocado green and the cold ingredients cold.
- Cook first. Cook the chicken, bacon and eggs before cutting anything else, and let them cool. Warm chicken and warm egg are hard to dice neatly.
- Cut the lettuce and tomato. Produce goes on a clean board before anything else.
- Cut the cooked ingredients. Chicken, bacon and egg.
- Cut the avocado last, right before assembly, because cut avocado browns.
If you cook the chicken yourself, handle it raw on a separate board or plate. The FDA advises one cutting board for fresh produce and a separate one for raw meat, poultry and seafood, and washing boards with hot, soapy water after each food. Once the chicken is cooked, it can be diced on the same board as the vegetables.
The chicken
Roast, poach or grill boneless chicken breasts, and cook them until they reach 165°F in the thickest part, the safe minimum for poultry. A rotisserie chicken also works; how to break down a rotisserie chicken shows how to get the breast meat off in large pieces.
Let the meat cool, then slice it into half-inch planks, cut the planks into half-inch strips, and cut across the strips into cubes. Cut against the grain where you can, so each cube is tender rather than stringy.
The bacon
Thick-cut bacon gives pieces closest to the size of everything else. Cut the raw slices crosswise into half-inch pieces on the board or plate you keep for raw meat, then cook them in a skillet over medium heat until crisp, and drain them on paper towels. How to cut bacon into lardons covers the cut in detail.
Cutting before cooking gives even, crisp pieces. Cooking whole slices and crumbling them afterward gives a mix of dust and shards, which disappears into the lettuce.
The eggs
Hard-cook the eggs until both the yolk and the white are firm, which is the FDA’s guidance for eggs. Chill them in cold water, then peel. Halving hard-boiled eggs for deviled eggs has tips for clean peeling.
To dice an egg, cut it in half lengthwise, lay each half flat, and cut it into three strips lengthwise, then across into cubes. The yolk will crumble a little. That is fine; the crumbled yolk dresses the lettuce around it.
Hard-cooked eggs keep in the refrigerator for up to a week, according to the FDA, so they can be cooked well ahead.
The tomato and avocado
Tomato. Use a firm tomato. Cut it in half, scoop out the seeds and the watery pulp with a spoon, and dice the flesh into half-inch pieces. Seeding keeps the salad from turning watery. How to slice tomatoes for sandwiches covers how to cut through the skin without crushing the fruit.
Avocado. Choose one that is ripe but still firm, so the cubes hold their edges. Halve it, remove the pit, and dice the flesh in the skin: score lines half an inch apart one way, then the other, and scoop out the cubes with a spoon. How to cut an avocado safely covers removing the pit without the knife slipping toward your hand.
The blue cheese, lettuce and chives
Blue cheese. A firm blue can be diced; a soft one should be crumbled into pieces of about the same size. Cold cheese is easier to cut, so keep it in the refrigerator until you need it.
Lettuce. Romaine is the traditional base. Rinse the leaves under running water, dry them well, stack them, and cut across into ribbons about half an inch wide, then chop through the pile once or twice so the pieces are bite-sized. Dry lettuce holds the vinaigrette; wet lettuce dilutes it.
Chives. Slice them very fine with a sharp knife, in a bundle, so they cut cleanly instead of bruising. How to chop fresh herbs shows the technique.
Assemble in rows
Spread the chopped lettuce over a wide, shallow platter. Lay each diced ingredient in its own row across the top: chicken, bacon, egg, avocado, tomato, blue cheese. Scatter the chives over everything.
The rows are the reason for the even dice. Each row is a line of identical cubes, and the salad reads as orderly and deliberate. At the table, toss it with the vinaigrette, or let each guest scoop across the rows and dress their own portion.
The dressing is a red wine vinaigrette. A simple one is red wine vinegar, a little Dijon mustard, salt and pepper, whisked with olive oil.
Keep it safe
A Cobb salad carries cooked chicken, eggs and bacon, so it should not sit out for long. Refrigerate perishable food within two hours, or within one hour if the temperature is above 90°F, and keep the refrigerator at 40°F or below. For a buffet, set the platter over a tray of ice, or put out a smaller platter and refill it from the fridge.
For packed lunches, store the diced ingredients in separate containers, with the avocado cut the morning you eat it. Chopped salad prep for the week explains which ingredients hold up when cut ahead and which do not.
Setting up the board
Six ingredients in a half-inch dice need a large, steady surface where finished piles can wait in rows. The WONAMU. acacia cutting board is 12 by 9 inches of acacia, a true hardwood, with a perimeter juice groove that holds tomato juice on the board. Dice each ingredient, push it to one edge in a neat row, and start the next.
Wipe the board between the tomato and the cooked ingredients, and wash it in hot, soapy water when you finish.
The short version
Cook the chicken to 165°F, crisp the bacon, and hard-cook the eggs until yolk and white are firm. Let everything cool.
Dice chicken, bacon, egg, seeded tomato, blue cheese and, last of all, avocado into half-inch pieces. Chop the romaine a little larger and slice the chives fine. Lay each ingredient in its own row over the lettuce and dress it with red wine vinaigrette. Refrigerate within two hours.
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WONAMU. makes an acacia cutting board designed for daily prep, 12 × 9 inches, acacia, with a perimeter juice groove. Available on Amazon.
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