Being the frugal (cheap) person I am, I find it difficult to justify spending $8 on a salad sometimes. Honestly, I always end up buying the salad and justifying it, but I do feel guilty and that's enough right?
I figured I would go ahead and try the copycat recipe I found on Pinterest for this perfect salad.
Copycat Portillo's Chopped Salad
I didn't have all the ingredients, and I rarely use exact measurements in cooking. I pretty much just eyeball everything.
The recipe calls for green onions, iceberg lettuce, romaine lettuce, ditalini pasta, gorgonzola cheese, red cabbage and tomatoes.
I had tomatoes, I just didn't feel like chopping them up. And I definitely forgot to write down or purchase red cabbage. I also just had regular bleu (blue?) cheese because gorgonzola is too overpowering for me. The recipe called for 4 oz. of cheese. I used 5 oz and it turned out fine.
What I also included: Cubed pieces of chicken breast. I wanted to make this a MEAL.
Chopping everything up and boiling the pasta and cooling it down are a bit time consuming. More than I had anticipated, I guess. Also probably due to the fact that little C was crying up a storm at the same time.
The vinaigrette was easy. I used my beautiful, perfect, amazing ninja for that part, but failed to take pictures. Okay. I'll be honest, I didn't take a picture because it looked like a balsamic vinegar massacre in my kitchen and I don't need permanent records of how messy I am in the kitchen.
I combined it all together. Then forgot to take a picture until I was well into eating the salad.
So I realize it looks a bit bland, but the flavors were pretty decent.
Prep: Depending on your knife skills, this takes a little bit of time since you chop everything up. There's also the pasta you need to cook too. I think with more practice, this will become easier.
Cook: I cooked the bacon in the oven, the chicken in a frying pan and the pasta at the same time. It was all very easy.
Taste: The parts of the salad were very reminiscent of the chopped salad. The dressing was decent. Big C said that it tasted close to the chopped salad. I guess it wasn't sweet enough for me. I think I'm going to experiment (or just look up) a honey mustard vinaigrette. Or just add honey to the recipe I used. I love vinegar, but the taste was a bit overpowering for me. I wanted a bit more sweet.
For anyone too far from a Portillo's, this will definitely satiate you. Not 100% but definitely close enough.
I'd love to hear from anyone who has tried this and has any suggestions to improve it!
Until next time.
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