Cobb Salad — The Full Classic
The weekend Cobb: the full-project build behind #9's everyday version — a roasted chicken instead of a poached breast, bacon larded through the rows rather than scattered, eggs cooked to the blue-ribbon line, and an avocado rose's worth of finish. Same platter law, deeper bench, and the Derby history given its full telling. This is the Cobb for six on a Sunday; #9 remains the Tuesday cut.
| Active time | 45 minutes |
| Hands-off time | 35 minutes (chicken roast, eggs, bacon) |
| Difficulty | Moderate — component juggling, not knife skills |
| Key techniques | roast chicken for salad, larding the rows, the 10-minute blue-ribbon egg |
| Make-ahead | every component 1 day; assembled, dress at service |
Cobb Salad — The Full Classic
Prep: 45 minutes · Cook: 30 minutes · Total: About 1 hour 15 minutes · 6 as a main
Ingredients
The lawn
- 500 g (about 2 hearts) romaine, chopped fine, plus 50 g (2 cups) watercress or baby gem, chilled
The rows
- 1 whole chicken breast on the bone, split (about 500 g), or 400 g boneless — roasted per below
- 10 slices thick-cut bacon (about 200 g)
- 4 large eggs (about 200 g), boiled exactly 10 minutes
- 2 avocados (about 400 g), cubed
- 300 g tomatoes, seeded and diced
- 120 g (1 cup) blue cheese crumbles — roquefort for the faithful
- 6 scallions (about 120 g), sliced thin
- 1 chive handful (about 10 g), for the finish
The dressing
- One batch #6 red wine vinaigrette (180 ml), with 1 tsp Worcestershire and the juice of half a lemon (about 20 ml) whisked in
- 40 g (1/3 cup) shaved parmesan — the row that is not a row but rides the dressing
Instructions
- Roast the chicken to 74 °C. Hot oven, oiled and seasoned breast, 18–22 minutes — the high heat browns a skin-on split breast while the interior stays juicy, and the rest redistributes the juices before the chill. Checkpoint — 74 °C at the thickest point on an instant-read thermometer, the juices running clear, the flesh just-opaque. The roasted flavor is the upgrade over #9's poached — deeper, browned, the salad's most assertive row.
- Boil the eggs to the blue-ribbon line, exactly 10 minutes. Lowered into already-boiling water, timed 10, ice-bathed immediately — the yolk fully set but stopping short of the gray-green ring. The blue-ribbon name is the old cafeteria term for the perfect boiled egg: set, bright, tender. Checkpoint — the yolk is uniformly golden with a center just faintly deeper in color — no gray rim anywhere. Ten minutes in a full boil, then ice, is the whole margin.
- Render the bacon to lardons. Cut the slices crosswise into 1 cm lardons before cooking, and render at medium-low 10–12 minutes until crisp-shy, then drain on towels. Lardons distribute through the platter where strips sit in one row's geography — the full classic lards the bacon across the whole dish. Checkpoint — the lardons snap when bent and their fat ran clear; half stay whole for the rows, half crush into the lawn.
- Build the full-classic platter. Chop the chilled chicken into cubes; crumble half the lardons over the romaine-and-watercress lawn and toss lightly so the bacon works into the base. Then the rows across the top: chicken, egg quarters, avocado, tomato, blue cheese, whole lardons, scallions — each in its stripe, the larded lawn beneath distinguishing this build from #9's simpler floor. Checkpoint — from above: seven rows over a bacon-flecked green field. The larding is the flavor law — every forkful that starts at the lawn carries bacon, not just the forkfuls that find the row.
- Dress at the table, parm over, serve. Whisk the Worcestershire and lemon into the #6 vinaigrette, pour in the zigzag, scatter the parmesan shavings across the rows, chives over everything, and carry it out. Checkpoint — eating test: the full bench in one cross-rows bite — roasted chicken depth, blue-ribbon egg, lardon crunch, avocado's cool, tomato's acid, blue cheese funk, and the lawn's bacon under all of it. Richer and rounder than #9's build by design; this is the Derby's midnight plate at Sunday scale.
- The schedule: eggs and chicken first (they cool longest), bacon while the chicken rests, everything else cut while the bacon drains. All components must be cold (4 °C, 20 minutes out before serving) except nothing — the full classic is a cold platter top to bottom.
- Roast, do not poach, the chicken — the full classic's flavor argument: preheat the oven to 220 °C, rub the breast with 1 tsp oil and a pinch each of salt and pepper, roast 18–22 minutes to 74 °C internal, rest 10 minutes, chill, then slice or cube.
Doneness & Quality Checkpoints
- Roast chicken 74 °C, rested, chilled before the cube
- Eggs at the blue-ribbon line — set, golden, no gray
- Bacon larded: half crushed into the lawn, half whole in the row
- Seven rows over the bacon-flecked field, cold platter throughout
- Dressed at the table with the Worcestershire-lemon vinaigrette
Finish & Plate
The largest cold platter you own. Rows read from every seat, the parmesan's white shavings crossing them at an angle, chives' green confetti over everything. Carve at the table cross-rows — the ceremony is the point of the full classic, and the host's cross-rows spoon is the Derby's own theater.
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Platter warm in patches | Chicken or eggs not chilled through | The 4 °C chill, 20 minutes out — no shortcuts at this scale |
| Rows collapsing | Wet tomatoes or over-dressed lawn | Seed the tomatoes; the lawn dresses at the table only |
| Bacon lost in the build | Skipped the larding half | Half crushed into the lawn is the full classic's law |
Storage, Make-Ahead & Variations
- Every component keeps 1 day refrigerated (4 °C) separately; the assembled platter holds 30 minutes undressed. The day-after map runs above — this recipe is a weekend's kitchen economy, not a single meal. - Variations: the shrimp Cobb (the #18 poach runs the rows); the turkey Cobb of the Derby's own Thanksgiving week; the vegetarian full classic — egg, avocado, blue cheese, and toasted nuts running the protein rows; and #9's Tuesday build as this classic's weeknight shadow.