BLT Chopped Salad with Homemade Creamy Buttermilk Ranch Dressing — The Salad That Earned Its Place at the Valentine’s Table

Valentine's Day. I cooked dinner for Brianna again — learning from last year's alfredo disaster. This time: steak. I bought two ribeyes from the butcher counter at Kroger (not cheap, but Valentine's Day is an authorized splurge), seasoned them with salt, pepper, and garlic butter (Dad's birthday steak recipe, translated through Mama's instructions over the phone), and seared them in a cast-iron skillet I bought at Goodwill for six dollars. The skillet — heavy, black, seasoned by some previous owner's years of use — is my first real piece of cookware. It is not a wooden spoon. But it is mine. The steaks were good. Actually good. Medium, which is harder to hit than it sounds — you have to feel the meat the way Dad feels the grill, with your fingers, with intuition that has not yet become intuition in me but is beginning to form. The outside was seared dark. The inside was pink and warm. I served them with baked potatoes (simple — oven, foil, butter) and a salad (from a bag, because I am honest about my limitations). Brianna dressed up. She wore a dress — the first dress in months that was not sweatpants or the stretchy pants of postpartum recovery. She looked beautiful. Not the effortless beauty of our early days, but the hard-won beauty of a woman who has birthed two children and is finding her way back to herself. I told her she was beautiful. She said, "You're wearing an apron." I was. A dollar-store apron, covered in flour from the baked potato experiment, and I looked ridiculous, and she laughed, and her laugh was the best sound I had heard all year. We ate by candlelight (two candles from the Dollar Tree, in coffee mugs because we do not own candlesticks). Gloria watched the kids. The apartment was quiet. Brianna and I sat across from each other and ate steak and talked, and for one evening, we were the couple at the restaurant in Corktown, the couple at the cookout in 2012, the couple who chose each other and keeps choosing each other even when the choice is hard. "This is really good, DeShawn," she said, cutting into the steak. "Like, really good." I said, "Thank you." And I meant: thank you for sitting here. Thank you for staying. Thank you for the heart emoji. Thank you for giving me a cookbook and a grill and a chance to become someone I was not before. Thank you for the twenty-one-year-old with the laugh that could fill a room, who became the mother of my children, who told me she was not happy and trusted me enough to say it. The steak was good. The evening was better. We are not fixed. But we are trying.

I told Brianna I served a salad from a bag, and I’m not ashamed of that — honesty about limitations is part of the deal. But if I’m doing Valentine’s dinner again next year, the salad is not coming from a bag. This BLT Chopped Salad with Homemade Creamy Buttermilk Ranch is what I’m making instead: crisp, real, and worth the extra ten minutes. It’s the kind of side that sits next to a good ribeye without embarrassing itself — the kind of thing you make when you’re trying, and the trying shows.

BLT Chopped Salad with Homemade Creamy Buttermilk Ranch Dressing

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 5 min | Total Time: 20 min | Servings: 2

Ingredients

• For the Dressing:
• 1/3 cup buttermilk
• 1/4 cup mayonnaise
• 2 tablespoons sour cream
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/2 teaspoon dried dill
• 1/4 teaspoon dried parsley
• Salt and black pepper to taste
• 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
• For the Salad:
• 1 large romaine heart, chopped (about 4 cups)
• 4 strips bacon, cooked crispy and crumbled
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1/4 cup red onion, thinly sliced
• 1/2 cup croutons (store-bought is fine)
• Salt and black pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Make the dressing. Whisk together buttermilk, mayonnaise, sour cream, garlic powder, onion powder, dill, parsley, lemon juice, and a pinch of salt and pepper in a small bowl until smooth. Taste and adjust seasoning. Refrigerate while you prep the salad — the flavor improves as it sits.
2. Cook the bacon. Lay bacon strips in a cold skillet and bring to medium heat. Cook 3–4 minutes per side until crispy. Transfer to a paper-towel-lined plate and let cool, then crumble into pieces.
3. Chop and prep. Rinse and dry the romaine thoroughly, then chop into bite-sized pieces. Halve the cherry tomatoes and thinly slice the red onion.
4. Assemble the salad. Combine romaine, tomatoes, red onion, and most of the bacon in a large bowl. Drizzle with ranch dressing and toss to coat evenly — start with half the dressing and add more to taste.
5. Top and serve. Divide between two plates. Top with remaining bacon crumbles and croutons. Serve immediately alongside your ribeyes.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 390 | Protein: 11g | Fat: 31g | Carbs: 18g | Fiber: 3g | Sodium: 620mg