This post contains affiliate links. Please see our disclosure policy.
Ice-cold lettuce, shatteringly crisp oven-rendered bacon, and a lightly funky herbed bleu cheese dressing make this salad one of the only steakhouse dishes that’s actually worth the effort to make at home.
Table of Contents
Why This Wedge Salad Recipe Delivers
Wedge salad is an old-fashioned dish that’s been badly misrepresented in the modern era. Like most of my recipes, my version aims to cut what isn’t working and dial up what makes it genuinely great.
That starts with how the salad is built. The trad wedge shape acts as a pitched roof… all the good stuff slides right off and onto the plate, making it awkward to eat and the flavors disjointed. I found a way to bring some architectural finesse to the build so you experience all the smaller components at once, as a unified whole.
When this dish is done properly, it hits the ceiling of what’s possible for enjoyment of a salad.
Brian’s Pro Tips
Rinse Your Diced Red Onion – After you brunoise the red onion, put it in a fine mesh strainer and run cold water over it for about 30 seconds. This flushes out most of the sulfurous compounds that cause onion breath and that lingering harsh aftertaste.
Seed the Tomato Before You Dice – While dicing the tomatoes, remove as much of the watery seed gel as possible. This isn’t just cosmetic. That gel will dilute the dressing, making it runny. The salad will be a little sloppy and it will look bad too.
Dress in a Bowl, Plate After – Put the chilled wedge in a deep bowl and sauce it generously in there first. The bowl catches all the dressing, tomatoes, & onion, so nothing goes to waste and the wedge gets fully coated on all sides. Then transfer it to the plate. This is the difference between a wedge that eats like a dream and one with everything pooled around it that’s kind of a bummer to eat.
Oven-Rendered Bacon – Cooking bacon in the oven at 350°F (175°C) instead of a skillet solves every problem pan-frying creates. You get even heat from all sides, so the strips render uniformly from edge to edge with no hot spots or curling. Because the bacon lies flat on a parchment-lined sheet tray, it comes out in perfectly flat, shatteringly crisp strips every time
Freezer-Blasting the Iceberg – Wrapping the prepped wedges of iceberg in a damp paper towel and parking them in the freezer for 15 minutes makes them extra stiff and super chilled. So when you take a bite, you not only get to have the pleasure of EXTREMELY COLD iceberg, you also get a very tight satisfying crunch that explodes lettuce juice into your mouth. It makes a big difference.
Key Ingredient Notes & Substitutions
These are the Important Ingredients I want to Call out. A full List of Ingredients and Amounts is in the Recipe Card Below.
Iceberg Lettuce
Iceberg has a certain wetness to it that a lot of people complain about. In my view, that’s a feature not a bug. When you bite into a cold wedge you get a rush of cold moisture that cuts right through the richness of the dressing. No other lettuce does this. Butter lettuce is too tender. Mixed greens have no structure. And romaine heads aren’t as tight or as loaded with moisture.
Fresh Dill and Chives
Fresh dill and chives bring grassy brightness that cuts through the richness of the bleu cheese base and signals that this dressing is homemade. This herb-forward quality is one of the things that separates this from a bottle of Hidden Valley.
The Garlic and Onion
Unlike the herbs, I recommend using powdered garlic and onion, not fresh. The powders are doing subtle heavy lifting to bring both umami and a nostalgic nod to classic Hidden Valley.
The Bacon Thickness
While you CAN use thick cut bacon for this recipe, I highly recommend you use a thinner cut. Thick bacon won’t get that shattering crisp texture, but I you DO use it, Increase the bake time by 5–10 minutes and accept that the bacon will eat a little more like a piece of meat than a bacon bit.
How To make Classic Wedge Salad
1. Render the Bacon. Preheat your oven to 350°F / 175°C. Arrange the strips of regular-sliced bacon in a single layer on a parchment-lined rimmed sheet tray, slide it into the oven and bake for 18–25 minutes or until the bacon is deeply reddish brown and stiff to the touch. You’ll know it’s done when the strips are uniformly dark and there’s no translucent, soft fat remaining.
2. Pull the tray from the oven and immediately prop one end up so the fat drains away from the strips. Let them cool completely.
3. Make the Herbed Bleu Cheese Dressing. In a medium bowl, whisk together buttermilk, sour cream, mayo, garlic powder, onion powder, fresh minced chives, chopped fresh dill and salt.
4. Stir in finely chopped bleu cheese. It should be small enough that it almost disappears into the dressing. Taste it. Adjust salt if needed. Refrigerate until you’re ready to dress your wedge salad.
4. Prep and Chill the Wedge. Quarter the iceberg head. Remove the heavy dense core from each wedge, then peel away any loose outer leaves and the inner 3 layers or so to create a flat, valley-like surface down the center of each wedge. Cover the wedges in a damp paper towel and place in the freezer for 10-15 minutes.
Won’t it freeze? No. Ten minutes isn’t enough to freeze the water inside the cells … it’s just enough to make the lettuce explosively crisp and ice-cold in a way the fridge alone can’t achieve.
Why remove the inner layers? By pulling the very center out, you create a flat channel that holds dressing and toppings in place instead of letting them roll off a rounded surface onto the plate.
5. Prep the Toppings
- Dice your cooked bacon.
- Brunoise the red onion (that just means a very small dice), then rinse it in a strainer under cold water for 30 seconds and pat dry.
- Small dice the tomatoes, and remove excessive tomato seeds and gel.
Why remove the tomato seeds? The gel around the seeds is mostly water. Leaving it in waters down your dressing and makes the dice look sloppy.
6. Assemble and Serve. Pull the wedges from the freezer. Place one in a deep bowl and sauce it generously with the bleu cheese dressing, making sure to get some in between the layers of the lettuce.
Then layer on the toppings: tomatoes, diced bacon, red onion, and bleu cheese crumbles, more chives, and dill.
Spoon a small amount of dressing directly onto your serving plate, then transfer the dressed wedge on top. Finish with more dressing and bacon.
Serving TipS
Make it a meal. Grilled chicken, sliced seared steak, or blackened shrimp all work. Add the protein last, leaning against the wedge, so it doesn’t crush the structure. This turns a side into a $24 restaurant entrée.
This salad also makes a great steak night app. Check out my Steak Au Poivre recipe here.
Don’t underdress. Underdressing it and serving it less than ice cold temp. A wedge salad is supposed to be indulgent and ice-cold. Be generous with the dressing — this is not a light salad — and make sure the lettuce was in the freezer. Skip either of those and you’re just eating a head of lettuce with some stuff on top.
Pin this now to find it later
Pin ItStorage & Make-Ahead
The bacon can be rendered up to 3 days ahead. Store it in the fridge
The dressing keeps for up to 5 days in the fridge
Once assembled, a wedge salad doesn’t store. The dressing breaks down the iceberg almost immediately once it’s dressed. This is a build-and-eat dish. But with the dressing made, bacon rendered, and toppings prepped, assembly is literally two minutes. That’s the move if you’re making it for guests, do all the prep ahead, assemble right before you serve.
Classic Wedge Salad
Ingredients
- 85 g buttermilk
- 35 g sour cream
- 150 g mayonnaise, Duke's if you can find it
- 5 g garlic powder
- 5 g onion powder
- 2 g salt
- 35 g bleu cheese, Point Reyes brand if you can find it
- 8 g fresh dill, chopped
- 8 g fresh chives, sliced
For the Salad
- 450 g bacon, regular/thin cut
- 1 large iceberg lettuce
- 1 red onion, diced and rinsed
- 1 small tomato, diced, seeds removed
- extra bleu cheese crumbles, for topping
- extra fresh chives dill, for garnish
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F/175°C. Lay bacon strips on a parchment-lined sheet tray and bake 18–20 minutes until deeply brown and stiff. Prop one end of the tray to drain fat. Cool completely and dice.
- To make the dressing, whisk together buttermilk, sour cream, mayo, garlic powder, onion powder, and salt. Finely chop bleu cheese, chop dill and chives and fold in. Taste and adjust salt if needed.
- Quarter the iceberg head, remove the core, and strip the inner 3 layers to create a flat valley in each wedge. Cover with a double layer of damp paper towel and freeze for 10 minutes.
- Finely dice and rinse the red onion. Seed and small dice the tomato.
- Place a chilled wedge in a bowl and sauce generously with dressing. Layer on diced tomatoes, bacon, red onion, additional dressing, chives, dill, and additional bleu cheese.
- To plate, spoon dressing on serving plate, set wedge on top.
Notes
- Adding grilled chicken, sliced seared steak, or blackened shrimp all work great to make this salad a full meal. Add the protein last, leaning against the wedge, so it doesn’t crush the structure. This turns a side into a $24 restaurant entrée.
- Be sure to add a generous amount of the bleu cheese dressing. A wedge salad is supposed to be a little naughty! You also need this dish to be served ice cold so make sure the lettuce was in the freezer before you dress it.
Like this? Leave a comment below!My Go-To Gear
- Parchment Sheets – one of the biggest time and effort savers in my kitchen. They’re already cut to fit perfectly in a half sheet tray so you don’t have to struggle with awkwardly tearing a sheet from the roll and hoping it fits.
- Half Sheet Tray – I own MANY of these. They’re versatile, heavy duty, and exactly what I used in professional kitchens but also use at home when cooking most of my meals.
- Stainless Bowl – Everyone needs an all-purpose stainless steel bowl in their kitchen. I have many of these in different sizes and reach for one almost every day.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Underdressing it and serving it less than ice cold temp. A wedge salad is supposed to be indulgent and ice-cold. Be generous with the dressing, this is not a light salad, and make sure the lettuce was in the freezer. Skip either of those and you’re just eating a head of lettuce with some stuff on top.
Yes — this is actually recommended. Make it up to 3 days ahead and store it covered in the fridge. The lactic acid in the buttermilk softens the bleu cheese and the flavors meld in a way that makes it noticeably better on day 2. Give it a stir before using since it may thicken slightly as it sits.
Little Gem lettuce is the best sub. They have very tight heads with many crunchy layers and a moderate moisture content. Romaine works but the heads aren’t as tight usually. Avoid butter lettuce, mixed greens, or anything delicate, they’ll wilt under the dressing immediately and won’t give you the structural eating experience that makes a wedge a wedge.
Thin it with a small splash of buttermilk, a tablespoon at a time. The mayo and sour cream ratios can vary by brand, so the consistency will vary batch to batch. You want it thick enough to coat the lettuce while still being pourable.
