Wedge Salad
The steakhouse's cold open: a quarter of ice-cold iceberg, blue cheese dressing, bacon, tomato, and blue cheese crumbles. Iceberg is the point, not the shortcut — no other lettuce shatters like it, and the wedge's architecture (crunchy outside, sweet heart inside) is the dish. The file's craft is a cold wedge and a thick dressing that clings instead of pooling.
| Active time | 15 minutes |
| Hands-off time | 15 minutes (bacon, chilling) |
| Difficulty | Easy |
| Key techniques | the cold wedge, cling-ratio dressing, the crumble-over rule |
| Make-ahead | dressing 3 days; assembled wedges serve in 5 minutes |
Wedge Salad
Prep: 15 minutes · Cook: 15 minutes · Total: 30 minutes · 4
Ingredients
The wedges
- 1 head iceberg lettuce (about 500 g), cold from the fridge
- 8 slices bacon (about 150 g)
- 200 g (about 1 1/2 medium) tomatoes, seeded and diced small
- 2 scallions or 2 tbsp (8 g) chives, sliced thin
- 40 g (1/3 cup) blue cheese crumbles, plus more if you love it
- Black pepper, cracked coarse
The blue cheese dressing
- 120 g (1/2 cup) sour cream
- 60 g (1/4 cup) mayonnaise
- 60 ml (1/4 cup) buttermilk (about 62 g) — plus more to adjust
- 60 g (1/2 cup) crumbled blue cheese
- 1 tsp (5 ml) red wine vinegar or lemon juice
- 1/4 tsp (1 g) garlic powder
- 1/4 tsp (1 g) salt, plus more to taste
- 2–3 grinds black pepper
Instructions
- Cook the bacon, 10–12 minutes at medium-low. Cold pan, medium-low heat, turning every few minutes, until the bubbling turns fine and the strips are crisp-shy — they finish crisping as they cool on paper towels. Crumble or cut into thick shards; keep half the shards whole for the top. Checkpoint — a strip bent with tongs snaps rather than folds; the rendered fat is clear, not cloudy. Thick-cut bacon gives better shards; thin-cut gives better crumble.
- Make the dressing, thick by design. Mash the 60 g blue cheese with the sour cream, mayo, vinegar, garlic powder, salt, and pepper until mostly smooth with some crumb texture left, then stir in the buttermilk 30 ml at a time. Stop when the dressing falls off the spoon in a slow, heavy ribbon — a wedge dressing must cling to a vertical cut of lettuce, which a pourable ranch will never do. Checkpoint — the spoon test: coat a spoon, hold it horizontal — the dressing should slide slowly and leave a thick coat. If it runs off clean, add 15 g more sour cream; if it stands stiff, add buttermilk a splash at a time. Chill 15 minutes, which firms it one more notch.
- Cut the wedges, cold and clean. Pull off any tired outer leaves, whack the core on the counter, twist it out, and cut the head into quarters through the core — each wedge stays intact because a wedge of loose leaves is just salad. Rinse briefly under cold water only if needed and shake dry gently; water hides between the leaves and dilutes the dressing below. Checkpoint — each wedge stands on its cut base with tight, white-green layers. Gappy layers mean a bruised head — pick another; this recipe has no way to repair old lettuce.
- Build from the bottom up, on a cold plate. Stand each wedge on its base, spoon the dressing generously over the top and down the sides — the wedge's texture needs the dressing to reach the interior layers, so err on the heavy side — then scatter tomato, bacon shards, blue cheese crumbles, scallions, and a firm grind of pepper. Checkpoint — eating test: the first cut should crack through icy layers and carry dressing, blue cheese funk, bacon salt, and tomato acid in one bite — the fork is the knife here, and the wedge's job is to resist exactly enough. If the dressing pooled at the plate's edge, it ran thin; next batch tighter.
- The iceberg must be genuinely cold — 4 °C straight from the fridge, no counter rest. The wedge's contrast (icy crunch, rich dressing, warm bacon) is the dish's entire physics; a room-temperature wedge is a failed salad.
- Make the dressing first: it thickens in the fridge while you cook, and it needs the cold to reach cling strength.
Doneness & Quality Checkpoints
- Iceberg at 4 °C straight to the plate — no counter rest
- Dressing at slow-ribbon cling, chilled before service
- Bacon crisp-shy out of the pan, snapped on the plate
- Wedges cut through the core, standing intact
- Built to order, never plated ahead
Finish & Plate
Cold plates if you have them — 5 minutes in the freezer. One wedge per plate for a first course, two for a lunch with extra dressing on the side. The wedge takes a steak's worth of pepper and stands up to any red wine you would pour with one; it is the steakhouse's overture and this file keeps the orchestra cold.
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Dressing runs off the wedge | Too much buttermilk or no chill | Tighten with sour cream; chill 15 minutes |
| Wedge watery on the plate | Water trapped between leaves or wet cutting | Shake dry, cut dry, serve immediately |
| Salad tastes bland despite the parts | Under-salted dressing or timid blue cheese | Salt the dressing to the point of almost-too-much on a spoon; the lettuce dilutes |
Storage, Make-Ahead & Variations
- Dressing keeps 3 days refrigerated (4 °C) and improves; cooked bacon keeps 2 days; cut wedges hold 2 hours in ice water. Assembled wedges serve immediately — there is no storage format for a dressed wedge. - Variations: the #4 ranch swap for blue-cheese-shy tables (ranch wedge with blue crumbles is a legitimate modern steakhouse format); candied bacon for the sweet-salt register; the thick-cut tomato steak under the wedge in August; hot sauce zigzag for the Nashville-adjacent version.