Low Carb Chef Salad With Red Roquefort Dressing

This low carb chef salad is a hearty salad you can eat for dinner and feel very satisfied. I topped mine with a low carb red roquefort dressing that was sweet, tangy and full of blue cheese.  Only 3.0g net carbs for the whole salad. 

You might also like this low carb taco Cobb salad!

My hubby and I like to eat a large salad when I’m not in the mood to cook or when we want something less heavy. I love salads because you can put so many interesting and tasty ingredients on top. This low carb chef salad is one that my hubby likes because he’s meat and cheese kind of guy. So the other night I whipped this up with some low carb veggie soup and dinner was served… and quite tasty too!

 

What Do You Put On A Chef Salad?

Many restaurants and diners serve a chef salad. It’s basically a bed of lettuce with various meats, cheeses and hard boiled eggs. I would note that usually it’s a sturdier lettuce like romaine or iceberg. Also traditionally it was served with thousand island but you can use any kind of dressing. I like chef salads because it’s very low carb, filling and I usually have all the ingredients in my fridge. 😉

 

 

How To Make Red Roquefort Dressing

First of all if you have never had red roquefort dressing, it’s essentially Catalina type of French dressing with blue cheese. Of course the name infers using roquefort blue cheese which a strong and delicious type of blue cheese but I just use regular store bought blue cheese crumble. 

The base of red Roquefort dressing is usually tomato sauce or ketchup, both of which have many carbs. For this sugar free low carb dressing, I used tomato paste because it’s very concentrated, Swerve sweetener, vinegar, lemon juice, oil, spices and blue cheese. It tastes sweet and tangy and the blue cheese goes perfect with it.

 

 

Low Carb Chef Salad Ingredients

For this salad, I used romaine lettuce as the base. I didn’t bother to add any other vegetables because I was trying to keep the carbs down. As for the meats I usually see ham and turkey so that is what I used. For the cheese I used gouda and cheddar but you can try Swiss or any other sliced cheese you like. And lastly we used 1 boiled egg cut into quarters. 

 

 

Other Delicious Toppings You Can Use

If you want to make it more decadent you can add bacon on top. Another suggestion is to use carved meats instead of lunch meat. I used to crave a chef salad at Cracker Barrel because they used carved chunks of turkey and ham on theirs. It was sooo good. This would a good salad after the holidays with leftover ham or turkey.

Lastly you can add some more colorful vegetables like peppers, radishes, red onion, olives, cucumbers, etc. 

 

 

 

 

Who Invented The Chef Salad Anyway?

Chef Victor Seydoux was thought to have invented the chef salad. They say he was trying to save money by putting small slices of meat and cheese in the salads and it just took off! He worked at the Hotel Buffalo in New York. (wiki) Thanks Chef Victor Seydoux! 

 

 

 

So I hope this becomes one of your favorite low carb salads to make. It’s so easy as most ingredients you probably have on hand. By the way my sister has some great salad dressing recipes on her site; check out this post. 

If you want more low carb salad dressing check out these recipes.

1 tablespoon of dressing:

63 cals / 6.4g fat / 0.8g carbs / 0.2g fiber / 0.8g protein = 0.6g net carbs

The whole salad:

419 cals / 26.7g fat / 3.9g carbs / 0.9g fiber / 38.4g protein = 3.0g net carbs