I never understood what people found so special about a caesar salad. For me, it seemed like a very basic salad that mainly contains chicken and lettuce. Nothing special.

Because of that, I would never order this salad. Until I started to read a bit more about this salad and had to admit that it did sound quite tasty.

A dressing with anchovy, that sounded very interesting. I love anchovy! And homemade croutons, chicken, bacon and parmesan cheese didn’t sound like a bad combination either. Time to make a low FODMAP caesar salad! 

This salad is also worth a try when you are not a fan of anchovy, you don’t taste it in the salad. The anchovy simply gives the dressing A LOT of flavour. 

Low FODMAP caesar salad recipe

What are the ingredients of a caesar salad? In restaurants and online, you see many different caesar salads with all different ingredients. In the basis, a caesar salad consists of the following ingredients: 

• Romaine lettuce
• Croutons
• Garlic
• A boiled egg
• Parmesan cheese
• Worcestershire sauce
• Olive oil and lemon juice

Often, bacon, chicken and/or anchovy is added to a caesar salad too. I have added bacon and chicken to my recipe because with these ingredients added, the salad is large enough to eat it as a full meal.

If you only use the basic ingredients, it is more like a side salad for me. The homemade croutons that I have added give the salad a nice crunch and that is so good! 

 I left garlic and Worcestershire sauce out in my recipe because garlic is not low FODMAP and I didn’t have Worcestershire sauce (this is low FODMAP though). 

The caesar dressing

The caesar dressing is super flavourful and gives this salad her unique flavour. The dressing usually has a basis of mayonnaise, olive oil, lemon juice, white wine vinegar, parmesan cheese and chopped anchovy.

And wow, this combination has a lot of flavour. I fell head over heels in love with this dressing. You can find the caesar dressing recipe here. 

Is caesar salad healthy? 

I often saw the question “Is ceasar salad healthy?” coming by. In general, I don’t like calling something healthy or unhealthy because what one person finds healthy is considered unhealthy by another and vice versa.

In the basis, the caesar salad contains quite some protein because of the chicken, the egg and the bacon that you add. So it is a filling and protein-rich salad.

The caesar dressing contains quite some calories and fat because you use mayonnaise and olive oil in it and next to that, parmesan cheese and bacon also contain fat.

So this salad contains quite a lot of fat. BUT, you don’t have a caesar salad without a caesar dressing, so I would really find it a shame if you leave it out.

If you think that the salad contains too much fat, you can add less parmesan cheese or bacon. 

Finally, this basic recipe for caesar salad doesn’t contain that many vegetables, only lettuce. If you want to add some more vegetables to the salad, you can cucumber, tomato or red bell pepper.

Like this, you create some more volume and make the salad more filling. 

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