I’m often slow to pick up on viral trends, as my twin daughters like to remind me. So for better or worse, I’m woefully late on the chicken Caesar pizza recipe that’s been making the rounds on TikTok and Instagram. But like much of America, I wanted to make it as soon as I saw a picture of the dish, despite the fact it would mean buying something I’ve always avoided in the grocery store: canned chicken.
My distaste for the product is both textural (it’s so mushy!) and the fact that canned chicken tastes suspiciously like something else I can’t stand unless it’s smothered with mayonnaise, pickle and onion — canned tuna.
I’ve loved Caesar salad ever since I first had it way back in the mid 1980s, when I was working as a paralegal on an oil deal in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The fancy restaurant inside the fancy hotel the law firm put us up in made the crisp Romaine salad table-side, and for a girl who grew up on iceberg lettuce and bottled Italian dressing, it was nothing short of amazing. I felt so sophisticated!
I’ve made Caesar salad many times over the years since, with both a classic dressing and lazier versions that substitute mayonnaise for raw egg yolk and olive oil. So when one of my daughters sent me the TikTok, I figured, “Why not?” but with a caveat. I’d make it first with canned chicken and then a second time with fresh to see if there was any discernible difference.