Post Brown-balled.
Naw, I’m there with you, too. I’ll use it sparingly in some applications, but, as a salad dressing (or, for that matter, chicken wing dip), it’s among the bottom of my choices.
There are a few places around that have a salad bar, Pizza Ranch being one.
Their best salad is a big scoop of the canned brown pudding (chocolate I assume) covered with a spoonful of canned peaches and topped with diced eggs (I hope they’re not canned). Maybe some croutons if you’re feeling racy. Leave the plate on the table as you eat pizza and their fried chicken.
Needless to say, salad bars around here are abysmal.
It sounds like the most common solution to a delicious salad is to make an incredibly unhealthy salad.
If I have a hankering to go to a buffet, it’s usually because I’m craving a gigantic salad. Forget the other stuff. I just wish you could get a gigantic bowl to toss it in. With standard ingredients, I usually load up on cucumber, bell pepper, onion, radish, maybe some spinach. From there I might get peas and cheddar and a bit of a creamy dressing*, especially if there’s crumbled bacon. Or some sliced chicken or steak and a vinaigrette, but add a little blue cheese and nuts if available. Bonus points for dried cranberries or currants or avocado.
If I’m going to go the full salad route, then my second course is inevitably cottage cheese with chopped tomatoes or salsa. Maybe some melon for dessert.
*I don’t usually like ranch dressing, but there’s a certain kind that often used to be called “house dressing” that was very black-peppery and fresh tasting. If I see that, then I’ll get it. Otherwise “Caesar” or blue cheese, which I dilute about 50/50 with vinegar so it’s not so cloying. I do this at home, too, if I buy bottled dressing.
There’s no rule that a salad has to be healthy. 
Spring mix, broccoli, lemon-pepper salmon, red bell pepper, hard boiled egg and maybe some cheese. I’ve recently tried to stop using creamy/sweet dressing and switched to balsamic vinaigrette.
Salad can either be healthy, or taste good. If you want healthy food that also tastes good, don’t go for the salad. Go for, I don’t know, baked salmon or something.
Personally, I like that ice cold, runny ranch dressing they have down south and at some restaurants. Some croutons, any lettuce except iceberg, and some carrots and tomatoes, and maybe some cheese, is all I need. But adding nuts, chicken, bacon bits, ham, chicken salad, or even pasta salad is just fine by me.
Am I the only one who hates how huge the salad ingredients usually are, though? Often I have to spend a few minutes cutting up the large veggie chunks and trying to mix in the dressing well before I can even start eating it. There was this local pizza place though that sliced everything really small on their salads, it was great. You could eat it with a spoon if you wanted. We need more salad bars like that.
All I do is walk through and grab the stuff I like as they come up. And I always pile it on.
Though, if the place has taco meat, I might make a taco salad instead.
Here’s my homemade Caesar salad recipe:
Pasteurize an egg for safety (put it in hot but not boiling water for 3 minutes).
Mix the following – 1 or 2 cloves garlic, minced, 2 tsps lemon juice, 1 tbspn Worcestershire sauce, 1-2 chopped anchovy filets, 2 tbspns dijon mustard, a dash of honey (if you like a tiny bit of sweetness), and red pepper flakes/hot sauce if you want heat, and the egg yolk. I eyeball the ingredients, so you don’t have to get them exact. Stir in 1/3rd cup of olive oil until smooth. Toss with a big bowl of chopped romaine lettuce to your desired amount, and black pepper and parmesean cheese to taste.
Soup Plantation/Sweet Tomatoes is the only ranch dressing I’ll eat, and I love it. And yes to why the huge chunks of things. I spend time trying to cut it down to an eatable size on those small plates. Hmmm, maybe if I didn’t put so much on them. Iceberg is a must for me, pickled beets, those crispy won-ton things, chopped tomatoes (never nasty old cherry tomatoes) and a separate plate for the other salads. And the pickles. Which don’t go on a salad.
That doesn’t sound right to me at all, if you truly want to pasteurize it. 3 minutes in hot water? The official recommendation is 57C for 65-75 minutes using sous vide (immersion) equipment.
I mean, I personally don’t bother and just take the risk, but there you can buy pasteurized and irradiated eggs if it is a serious concern to you.
This is where I got the 3 minute thing for quick pasteurizing:
It could well be wrong; I’m certainly no expert.
Very light on the greens (no lettuce) then lightly add:
Purple cabbage for color, cucumbers, red onion, shredded carrot, broccoli, red peppers, celery, dry cheese (asiago, parm, etc), croutons, craisins.
A spritz of some mediterranean or vinegrette dressing… just enough to dampen, not saturate.
Present with a couple of cherry tomatoes and freshly ground, black pepper.
I’m the guy at the salad bar that chooses the smallest/thinnest cuts of veggies out of the pile. A few, thin slices of celery will bless a salad but a lot of big celery chunks can curse it.
Yes, I’ll have to try that!
Bacon.
If health is a real concern, I’ll trust the NIH over a random internet post. (And there are other posts on the internet doubting the efficacy of 3 minutes in warm water if you search.) Remember, it’s not just external, but also internal contamination. There’s no way an egg sitting in warm water for 3 minutes is going to be rid of internal salmonella contamination. Your odds are still pretty darned low, though, of getting infected. It’s something like 1 in 20,000 eggs that are internally contaminated. As for external concerns, in the US, the eggs are washed and sanitized (for USDA graded eggs) before sale. Like I said, I personally don’t bother, but if it is a real concern, I wouldn’t put much faith in dunking eggs for 3 minutes in a hot water bath to do much of anything.
I despise ranch dressing. It seems that it is now served with everything at every restaurant in town, and other sauces are gone. Ranch with mushrooms, calamari, pizza and deep-fried ravioli, wings (which were originally served with bleu cheese), etc. As far as I can tell, one of the main flavors in ranch is onion, which is what makes it so loathsome.
Yes, my concern is about external contamination, which was my understanding of where most salmonella cases come from.
Maybe it does nothing; I’ll try and read more about it.