Mixed Greens Caesar

Salads are one of those diet foods that tend to get dieters into a lot of trouble rather quickly. Sure, it's vegetables, but once you start adding dressing, cheese, croutons, and other crispy toppings you can easily find yourself with a plate of vegetables that tops 1000 calories. They say true love lasts a lifetime, and I LOVE Caesar salad. So to ensure I can enjoy Caesar salad anytime I want for the rest of my life, I created a better Caesar salad.


There are really two things that make this salad great. First, I kicked up the traditional Caesar salad by adding mustard greens to the romaine lettuce. Yes, mustard greens, as in the cruciferous leafy green that produces the mustard seeds from which we get the familiar yellow condiment that adorns everything from potato salad to burgers. Mustard greens are rich sources of vitamins K, A, C and folate, and as well as substances called sulforaphanes that help the body get rid of bile acid in the gut. Bile acids are made from cholesterol and play an essential role in fat digestion, so having lower levels of bile acids means your body has to use up more of its own cholesterol to replace them. The real reason I love mustard greens in this recipe because they have a flavor that hints at Dijon mustard, but not in an overpowering way - just enough to add a little heat. Now, the fresher your greens, the more heat they'll have, and if you aren't a fan of that flavor, mustard greens keep really well in your crisper and will continue to mellow over the next several days. For salads, I prefer to remove the thick stem and use only the leafy portion of the mustard green, but that's a matter of personal preference.

The second thing that makes this salad great is the dressing. I've looked at several recipes for Caesar dressing, and they all use the same basic components: garlic, salt, pepper, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, olive oil, and either raw egg yolks or mayonnaise for creaminess. The result is a dressing that is loaded with calories and fat. To keep this dressing creamy without adding extra calories, I made a basic lemon and olive oil vinaigrette, added my traditional Caesar flavors, and bound it together with nonfat plain Greek yogurt. It's texture is similar to that of mayonnaise, but with significant fat and calorie savings, and it's slightly acidic flavor nicely complements the rest of the flavors in the salad. No one eating this would ever guess that you put yogurt on a salad!

So what kind of calorie savings are we talking here? This recipe will easily feed 4 people as a main dish, and comes in at 314 calories and only 14 grams of fat - including all that delicious cheese and a generous batch of my Homemade Croutons. For a gluten free option, you can use gluten-free bread to make the croutons or simply skip them altogether. Not only will making this recipe at home save you money, it saves you nearly 700 calories per serving. At my house we eat this as is, but I'm sure it would be delicious topped with some grilled chicken or salmon. Enjoy!

Mixed Greens Caesar, Serves 4 as a Main Dish
1 batch Homemade Croutons
1 head romaine lettuce
2-4 cups mustard greens, stems removed
1/3 cup plain nonfat Greek yogurt
Juice from 1/2 lemon
1 clove garlic, grated
2 Tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup plus 1 Tbsp shaved Parmesan cheese
2 1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
Salt and pepper to taste

Pour lemon juice into a large mixing bowl. Using a whisk, slowly pour the olive oil into the lemon juice in a thin, steady stream while whisking the mixture constantly to form an emulsion. Once mixture is well blended, add garlic, yogurt, 1 Tbsp of cheese, and Worcestershire sauce. Add salt and pepper to taste. Tear romaine and mustard greens into bite-sized pieces and add to dressing, toss well to combine. Top with the remaining cheese and croutons.