The Best Ever Restaurant-thentic Mexican Caesar Salad Dressing

[Updated September 30, 2020] Made in a blender, this savory and delicious Mexican Caesar Salad Dressing is rich and creamy.  Roasted Anaheim peppers are blended with lots of cilantro, Cotija cheese, pepitas, and other salad dressing ingredients to create a restaurant-thentic salad dressing that your family will crave.

I have Tiffany to thank for introducing me to this delicious Mexican salad dressing recipe.  She originally shared this recipe on this blog back in July 2013 when she was my blogging partner.  For those of you new to my blog, Tiffany is my niece and the mother of two beautiful girls (my great-nieces) known as Princess P and Princess Sweetie Pie.  They appear with regular frequency on this blog, as does Tiffany, even though she ‘retired’ from the blog in late 2013 to spend more quality time with her family.

Anyway, if you have ever had Mexican Caesar Salad at a restaurant you already know that the dressing is what sets this salad apart!  El Torito’s Mexican Caesar Dressing was always my favorite, so when El Torito, a California-based Mexican restaurant chain, closed down their restaurant in our community many years ago, we were bummed (they continue to operate many sites up-and-down the State of California, just not in our community).

Luckily for us, the mom of one of Tiffany’s good friends mastered the recipe and created a similar-flavored Mexican Caesar salad dressing that is delicious and full of flavor.  Easy to make in a blender, the hardest part is roasting the Anaheim peppers.  But, no worries – I’ll take you through the process step-by-step!

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Step-by-Step Instructions for Making Mexican Caesar Salad Dressing

This is really an easy recipe to make.  The key to the success of this recipe is to have the right ingredients on hand.

Step #1 – Gather Your Mexican Caesar Dressing Ingredients

You’ll need the following ingredients to recreate this Mexican Caesar dressing (starting in the top left corner and moving around the above photo in a clockwise direction):

Vegetable Oil, Canola Oil, Safflower Oil, or Avocado Oil – you will need a cup and a half (12 ounces) of a light-flavored oil.

Mayonnaise – you’ll also need a cup and a half of mayonnaise; if you want to substitute a light mayonnaise (35 calories per serving), no one will know the difference.  However, I don’t recommend the low-fat variety that is 15 calories per serving.  Low-fat mayonnaise makes a good substitute in applications that don’t require as much mayonnaise as this recipe calls for; for example, it’s a great substitute to use on sandwiches.

Salt and Pepper – you’ll need 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper.

Cilantro – you’ll need two small bunches of fresh cilantro.  Tip:  if you aren’t making this Mexican salad dressing on the day that you buy the fresh cilantro, place the bunches in a glass with about 2-inches of water covering the ends of the stems.  Then cover the cilantro, glass and all, with a gallon-size plastic bag and place in your refrigerator.  This will extend the life of your cilantro for several days.

Garlic Cloves – you’ll need two.  In the photos above and below, one is peeled and one isn’t.  You will need to peel the skin off the cloves of garlic, but you can leave them whole since you’ll be pulverizing them in your blender.

Cotija Cheese – you’ll need 5 tablespoons of crumbled Cotija.  I know it’s unbelievable, but on the day I went shopping, I couldn’t find it crumbled, so I bought a wedge.  Cotija is a Mexican cheese that’s a bit salty and crumbles easily much like Feta cheese, but it doesn’t taste like Feta cheese and is drier in texture and saltier.  It is typically used as the topping in Mexican elote (corn on the cob or street corn).

Anaheim Peppers – you’ll need 2.  As you can tell by the photo above in relation to the other ingredients, Anaheim peppers are large, about 6 to 10 inches in length and they are mild in flavor, so this Mexican Casaer dressing recipe is not spicy.  Roasting the Anaheim peppers is the hardest part of this recipe because you need to roast and skin them before adding them to the blender.

Red Wine Vinegar – you’ll need 1/4 cup of red wine vinegar.

Pepitas – you’ll need 1/3 cup of roasted and salted pepitas.  What are pepitas, you wonder?  They are similar to pumpkin seeds but are harvested only from certain varieties of pumpkins.

Here’s my helper, a boy named Coco, making sure that I’ve included everything needed to make this salad dressing.  Actually, missing from the photos above is water – you’ll need a quarter cup of water for this recipe, too.

Step #2 – Roast, Peel, and Seed the Anaheim Peppers

I have a gas stovetop, so I just roasted my Anaheim peppers over an open flame on my gas burner.  Do not walk away from your stove, if you are roasting your peppers this way!  They will blister fast and you don’t want to walk away for a minute and find them on fire!

I used long-handled metal tongs to flip them over, turning them several times and adjusting them on the burner in order to blister as much of the surface as possible.  If you don’t have a gas stovetop, there are several other ways you can roast your Anaheim peppers and I found a great post for you, written by food historian Tory Avey, with three different ways to roast bell peppers (oven, stovetop, grill).  However, I have to tell you this – roasting them on my stovetop, over medium heat, DID NOT take 15 to 20 minutes as stated in her post.  My peppers were done in a manner of minutes!

I blistered my Anaheim peppers just enough to have the skin slide off easily.

The above photo shows the brown paper lunch bag I used to ‘steam’ my Anaheim peppers for a few minutes after blistering them.  Also, in this photo, you can see the length of the long metal tongs I used to roast them on my gas stovetop burner.

In the photo above, I’m demonstrating how to place the blistered Anaheim peppers in the paper bag.  Since they are hot from the blistering process, it is best to use your tongs to put them inside the paper bag.  You need to place them in the paper bag immediately after removing them from the burner to allow time for them to steam.

Seal the bag by folding the top over a time or two and allow the peppers to steam until cool to the touch.  Then remove them from the bag and wipe them with a paper towel to remove the blackened bits.  If the paper towel doesn’t remove all the blackened bits, use your fingers to pick them off.  Then place the roasted Anaheim peppers on a chopping board and cut them open to remove the seeds.  The seeds will fall easily to the side, but you can use a teaspoon to scrape them off.  Don’t scrape too hard, though; you don’t want to annihilate your peppers because they are already soft!

Step #3 – Prep the rest of your ingredients for Mexican Caesar Salad Dressing

Prep the rest of your ingredients by measuring them and placing them in little bowls and/or measuring cups.  Wash your cilantro under cold, running water, but there is no need to remove the stems.  You will be placing stems and all in the blender.  In the photo above, the oil is in the large measuring cup, the red wine vinegar is in the smaller liquid measuring cup, and the water is in the orange measuring cup.  The garlic cloves are peeled and the salt and pepper are combined in a small bowl.  The Anaheim peppers are roasted, peeled, seeded, and cut into pieces (middle row left), the pepitas are in a bowl front and center, the Cotija cheese is behind the pepitas, and the mayonnaise is behind the water.  Assembling all the ingredients and prepping them this way makes the rest of the process go quickly.

Here’s a view of where I made my Mexican Caesar Salad Dressing – the end of my dark brown countertop on top of a large chopping board so that you don’t see as much glare from the granite surface!  My kitchen is part of our great room, so in the background, you can see our sectional, other furniture, the fireplace, and my dad’s amazing painting that I’ve named Emerald City.  Here’s a shameless plug:  I have another company called Wild Blue Yonder Art and we sell reproductions of some of my father’s artwork.  I say ‘some’ because he was also a sculpture and we don’t sell reproductions of his sculptures; only his paintings.  Check out Great Big Canvas to see this painting and others.

Step #4 – Blend Everything to Smithereens!

Place the Anaheim peppers, pepitas, garlic cloves, salt, pepper, canola oil, red wine vinegar, and crumbled Cotija cheese into the blender.

Give it a whirl, on high, until blended, about 30 seconds.

Add one bunch of cilantro and blend, then add the other bunch of cilantro and blend until smooth, about one minute total.

Continue to blend on high, adding the mayonnaise little-by-little through the funnel top in the lid.  Finally, pour the water slowly through the funnel top and blend until smooth and everything is incorporated.

This Mexican Caesar dressing recipe makes a lot of salad dressing!  Four and a quarter cups!  One quart plus!  I’m showing you the measurements in the blender so that you know this ahead of time.  If that’s too much for you, cut the recipe in half.  This salad dressing will keep in a sealed jar for one week in the refrigerator.

Serve this dressing on a Mexican Caesar Salad or think outside the box to use it in multiple ways.  The best part about this salad dressing is that it doesn’t have to be used only on a Mexican Caesar Salad.  It is great as a dip to accompany appetizers, chips, quesadillas, on a Mexican Caesar pizza, sandwich wraps, drizzled on roasted chicken, grilled steak, carne asada, shish kebobs, or a sauce on tacos!  Yum!

Kitchen Supplies and Equipment Needed to Make This Recipe:

This list of kitchen supplies and equipment links to Amazon and is provided for your convenience in case you don’t have everything you need.

Large Metal Tongs || Paper Lunch Bag || Paper Towels || Chopping Board || Kitchen Knife ||  Measuring Cups || Liquid Measuring Cups || Measuring Spoons || Blender || Rubber Spatula || Mason Jar || Canola Oil || Red Wine Vinegar || Mayonnaise

In the above photo are various things I’ve collected over the years and used in this photoshoot.  They are not necessarily currently available but I just wanted to share with you where I sourced them.  The ‘Good Taste’ wooden spoon I purchased at Michael’s, the beautiful decorative chopping board from Pier One, the rattan plate charger from World Market, the flowering cactus plant in the white pot from Home Depot, the white wooden slats used as the bottom surface is also from Michael’s, and the faux marble backdrop is from Replica Surfaces.

Here’s the recipe for The Best Ever Restaurant-thentic Mexican Caesar Salad Dressing:

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