Tasty vegetarian Caesar wraps with avocado and crispy, smoky chickpea croutons! Delicious and easy, you can use a premade Caesar dressing or my own dressing recipe which is anchovy free and yogurt based.
Caesar wraps always sounded so very delicious to me, but I can almost never eat the ones available in cafes and shops due to the fact that Caesar dressing is almost never vegetarian. Sooo I made my own. And yep, they’re delicious. A salad wrap is a bit of a tough sell, but with a thick, creamy garlicky dressing as our starting point, we are onto something great.
Avocado is there too, because I have always found avocado to be such a perfect pairing for Caesar salads, and it makes everything much more filling. We also have smoky crispy chickpeas there to take the place of croutons, and add some protein.
Honestly the only tricky part of this recipe is actually wrapping the wraps, which takes a level of dexterity I don’t always have, but I will never give you a wrap recipe that can’t accommodate poor wrapping technique, so it’s all good.
Go for burrito style wrapping here, where the filling stays in the middle pocket, rather than trying to wrap the filling up pinwheel style.
How to make a vegetarian friendly Caesar dressing
As I mentioned before, most restaurant and shop bought Caesars are off limits for vegetarians due to the anchovies and the parmesan cheese. You can get specialist vegetarian or vegan dressings; if you have one you like, just feel free to use that! If you want to use my homemade recipe, great!
This is how it works:
- I’ve chosen to use a greek yogurt base for this dressing (with a little olive oil added for richness and texture), which is not authentic at all, but I don’t feel like working with raw eggs, so what can you do.
- To mimic the taste of anchovies we make the fairly obvious swap to capers. Capers are salty and briney and perfect for the job.
- Instead of parmesan, we just find another Italian hard cheese that is made with vegetarian rennet. Inside the EU, a cheese can not be labelled as parmesan without having used animal rennet in the processing, you can google for more details if this isn’t something you’re familiar with but the long and short of it is, you want a cheese that mimics parmesan but isn’t allowed to be called parmesan. Most UK supermarkets will stock something called “Italian hard cheese” or “pasta cheese” – bingo. You can also use pecorino, which is sometimes made with vegetarian rennet. None of these cheeses are going to be identical to parmesan, they will not usually be as hard or as strong, but they get the job done.
The Crispy Chickpeas
We are pan frying the chickpeas today, not roasting them, because it just saves a bunch of time.
We add smoked paprika, garlic granules and honey to the pan, to give it a sweet smoky flavor. The honey adds sweetness and also stops them from being too dry and powdery from the seasonings- that stickiness is a welcome addition!
How to serve these wraps
If you’re looking to make a more complete meal out of your wraps, great! I have ideas:
- I love to serve them with seasoned fries of some kind, these potato wedges would be great, though realistically if you want this to be an easy meal, just grab something from the frozen aisle!
- Since there’s salad in the wrap you don’t exactly need a typical side salad, but a grain or potato salad such as my Green Olive Grain Salad or Greek Yogurt & Chive Potato Salad could work well.
- Sliced heirloom tomatoes with an olive oil drizzle, if it’s summer time, will always be my #1 side dish.
Other Recipes to Check Out:
- If vegetarian wraps are on your mind, check out Toasted Wraps with Boursin & Veggies and Satay Halloumi Wraps for a couple of warm wrap options.
- If you want more ideas for the vegetarian Caesar dressing, I’ve got Roasted Kale Caesar Salad with Chickpeas & Avocado and Roasted Kale Caesar Salad with Chickpeas & Avocado.
Chickpea Avocado Caesar Wraps
Ingredients
- 4 large flour tortilla wraps
- 2 small avocados, or 1-1.5 larger ones
- 2 heads little gem lettuce, rinsed, leaves separated but left whole – if you don't have any little gem lettuce, just chop Romaine into large pieces
- 4 Tbsp shaved parmesan or pecorino style cheese, see notes
- 1 lemon , zested – this is optional, if you don't love the taste of lemon you can leave it out
Chickpeas
- 1 can chickpeas, drained
- 1 tsp smoked paprika
- 1 tsp honey
- 0.5 tsp garlic powder, or 1 minced clove of fresh garlic
Yogurt Caesar Dressing
- ¼ cup (60 ml) greek yogurt
- 2 tsp extra virgin olive oil
- ½ clove garlic
- ½ lemon, juiced
- 2 tsp capers, in brine
- ½ tsp dijon mustard
- 2 Tbsp grated parmesan or pecorino style cheese
Instructions
- First, prepare the dressing by blending all ingredients until smooth and creamy. Set aside.1/4 cup greek yogurt, 2 tsp extra virgin olive oil, 1/2 clove garlic, 1/2 lemon, 2 tsp capers, 1/2 tsp dijon mustard, 2 Tbsp grated parmesan or pecorino style cheese
- Heat some olive oil in a frying pan, and add the chickpeas. Allow them to sit for about 1 minute, undisturbed, to give the bottoms a chance to crisp up a little.1 can chickpeas
- Add the smoked paprika, garlic powder and the honey to the pan, and mix through until they're well coated, the honey has dissolved into the pan, and the chickpeas are nicely browned in places.1 tsp smoked paprika, 0.5 tsp garlic powder, 1 tsp honey
- Now leave the chickpeas to cool down a little while you prep all the remaining ingredients. Just before you start assembling your wraps, check how pliable the wraps feel out of the packaging. If you're not sure they'll be easy enough to wrap, microwave them for 15 seconds to soften them up.4 large flour tortilla wraps
- Toss the lettuce leaves in some of the caesar dressing (don't use all of it, just enough for them all to get a light coating and then save the rest for drizzling). Place 2-3 leaves on a tortilla.2 heads little gem lettuce
- Add the avocado, shaved cheese, and a few pinches of lemon zest.2 small avocados, 4 Tbsp shaved parmesan or pecorino style cheese, 1 lemon
- Finally, scoop some chickpeas on top and add an extra drizzle of dressing.
- Wrap the tortilla as tightly as you can, and slice.
Thx for an easy recipe. I have a few problems with two issues. First,
Step 5: Toss the lettuce leaves in the caesar dressing and place 2-3 leaves on a tortilla.
Step 7: Finally, scoop some chickpeas on top and add an extra drizzle of dressing. After tossing the leaves in the dressing, “where” is this extra drizzle of dressing coming from in Step 7? A can of chickpeas provides 3.5 servings of 6g protein per serving. This is supposed to be four servings. How do you come up with 16g protein “per” serving?
Hi Sherry, thank you for pointing out the issues you had here. I have corrected the instructions to reflect that not all of the dressing is to be tossed with the lettuce, some is meant to be reserved for topping. I am so sorry about this.
With regards to the nutritional breakdown. I double checked how my software calculated this, and actually found that it has more protein than 16g. The original calculation seemed to be based off smaller tortillas, when I adjusted up to account for the usual size the protein comes up to 17.75g per wrap (rounded up to 18g on the recipe card).
This is how the protein breaks down per portion: Tortilla: 4.5g, Chickpeas: 5.25g, Avocado: 2g, Lettuce: 2g, Cheese: 2.75g, Yogurt: 1.25g = 17.75g
This kind of software isn’t perfect, but I sense checked each of those calculations against supermarket packaging and other sources and it seems about right to me. The tortillas were a surprise – I didn’t expect them to have so much protein! But I checked my supermarket brand (Sainsbury’s), Old El Paso and Mission tortillas and it holds up.