Welcome back to The Weedeater, Racket’s column exploring the exciting world of cooking with cannabis. Each month, I walk you through a tasty new cannabis-based recipe with foolproof instructions to make it yourself. Some are fast and easy. Others, elaborate and oh so very dumb. But all are delicious and leave you feeling real nice. With that, let’s get cooked!
Blackened Chicken Waedsar Salad
Caesar salad doesn’t get the respect it deserves. I guess salad in general doesn’t really get much respect, but Caesar especially deserves more than the gloopy bottled salad dressing it’s typically reduced to. Now don’t get me wrong, there are good bottled Caesars out there (RIP Paul Newman, your salad dressings are somehow just as excellent as your movies). But most bottled versions are too sweet and often lack the tangy umami of a proper scratch-made Caesar.
The Caesar salad deserves more. Its namesake and inventor, Caesar Cardini, deserves more. (Thankfully, the untold but absolutely true story of Cardini’s creation will soon be told by local auteur and occasional Racket contributor Tony Libera.)
But most importantly, you deserve more. You deserve a Caesar salad with a little extra salad, if you know what I mean.
That’s right, we’re making a weeded up Caesar, or a Waedsar, if you will. The true beauty of this recipe is how easy it is to dial in your preferred dosage. Three of the salad’s five components have THC in them: an infused dressing, a blackened chicken breast using Dr. Dabs Cajun seasoning, and a topping of Granny’s Original THC pretzel “croutons.”
The pretzel croutons add up to 10 mg, the chicken breast comes in at 5 mg, and a full batch of the dressing clocks in at 10-40 mg depending on how much cannabis oil you use. I made mine with 4 tablespoons, so my full batch of dressing was 40 mg. That said, I only used half the dressing for my salad, so I ended up at around 35 mg total for my Waedsar. Not bad for a salad!
If you’re looking for a lower dosage, just use less cannabis oil or swap the Dr. Dab’s and Granny’s for non-THC seasoning and croutons. Or forgo the infused dressing and just use the seasoning and pretzels. Either way, you’re going to end up with a delicious salad that gets you high. And isn’t that what life’s really all about anyway?
Here’s what you’re gonna need.
- 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil plus 1-4 tablespoons of cannabis olive oil depending on your preferred dosage. As a reminder, each tablespoon is about 10 mg if you’re following the method from the deviled egg recipe.
- 1 large egg yolk
- 2 to 6 anchovies, finely chopped
- 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
- 1 garlic clove, finely minced, crushed, or grated
- 1/4 cup finely grated parmesan cheese
- 1-2 heads romaine lettuce
- 1 large chicken breast
- 1-2 tablespoons canola oil
- 1 5 mg packet Doctor Dabs Cajun seasoning
- 10 Granny’s Original pretzels, lightly crushed
- Salt and pepper to taste
Here’s what you’re gonna do.
- Cook your chicken. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Pat the chicken breast dry with a paper towel. Season liberally with Dr. Dabs, salt, and pepper. Meanwhile, preheat an oven-safe pan on the stove until it’s ripping hot. A good way to test if it’s hot enough is to toss a few drops of water into it. If they spatter and pop and dance around the pan like no one’s watching, the pan is hot enough. Make sure all the water drops are evaporated before adding enough canola oil to thinly coat the pan. Gently place your chicken breast in the pan being sure to lay it away from you to avoid oil splatters. Press it gently with a pair of tongs to get as much contact with the pan as possible. Resist the urge to move it around. Let it cook on the first side for three minutes before flipping. Cook for another three minutes. Place entire pan into the oven and cook at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes or until the internal temp of the breast hits 155/160 degrees. Remove pan from oven and let your breast rest (and reach a safe 165 degrees via the magic of carryover cooking) while you prepare the rest of the salad.
- Make the Waedsar dressing. In a large bowl, add anchovies, garlic, lemon juice, parmesan cheese, Worcestershire sauce, and egg yolk. Give them a light whisk until combined. Now, you’re about to do some whisking while drizzling—or drizsking—so you’re gonna want to stabilize that bowl to keep it from moving around too much. Drape a kitchen towel over the top of a medium saucepan and place the bowl on top. This should keep the bowl in place while you whisk. Slowly start to drizzle in the oil while whisking constantly. As you drizsk, the mixture will emulsify and thicken into something that resembles Caesar dressing. It will be more of a pale yellow in color as opposed to its creamier and much whiter grocery store counterpart. Transfer dressing into a clean container but don’t bother washing the bowl out as we’ll mix the salad directly in it. (Note: This dressing recipe is largely inspired by this J. Kenji López-Alt video, so if you want to see a POV perspective of how to make it, give that a watch!)
- Assemble your salad. Now that we have our chicken and our dressing, it’s time to bring it all together into its final form. Start by cutting or tearing your romaine into bite-sized pieces. Rinse it thoroughly and either pat it dry with a paper towel or give it a rip in a salad spinner if you have one. It’s important to get your lettuce as dry as possible so the dressing sticks to it better. Put your lettuce in your dressed up bowl. Add your preferred amount of dressing and toss that salad. (You can store your excess dressing in an airtight container in the fridge for up to five days.) Add the lightly crushed Granny’s pretzels and toss again. Slice your now well-rested chicken breast against the grain. You can either just add the chicken directly to your salad mixing bowl and go to town on it, or you can plate up the salad on a nice serving vessel and top with the chicken. Either way, finish by grating a healthy amount of parmesan over the top of everything.
Or, you can take the easy way out.
As we discussed earlier, the beauty of this salad is how customizable it is in terms of dosing. That beauty extends to its many potential shortcuts as well. Obviously, if you skip the Doctor Dabs and/or Granny’s to cut down the dosage, that makes things a little easier. But you can also cut out the dressing instead and keep the Dr. Dab’s and Granny’s. You’ll skip the step of infusing the oil and if you use a fine bottle of Newman’s Own, you’ll also save yourself the effort of making the dressing while still enjoying a 15 mg salad. Finally, as with our Deviled’s Lettuce Eggs, you can always just add a few Sota Drops to some store bought gloop and still enjoy a salad that’ll have you soarin’.
Well, that’s all for this one. See you next time!
