Brown butter-grilled romaine is my favorite savory discovery in 2025. Brown butter adds a toasty, nutty flavor to anything, and when you grill romaine with it, you get this smoky, crispy, crunchy lettuce that is super addictive. While my home’s ventilation system hates me whenever I break out my grill pan for this, brown butter-grilled romaine is just worth it. Since I happened upon a ton of lemons(thanks, parents for dropping those off for me), I wanted to make a grilled romaine salad paired with some grilled lemons. Yeah, it sounds super simple, but it is a tasty recipe. To play off of the brown butter, I went with a miso-tahini dressing, something I normally put on noodles, but in this case, it just made sense with the grilled romaine as the vehicle for it. With the grilled lemon, that helps to cut through the richness of the dressing, keeping everything in balance. And to finsuh, I grated some pecorino cheese on top, because the nuttiness of that, coupled with the sesame and brown butter, makes for a wonderful foil to the charred lettuce and lemon. Yes, this is technically the second lemon-y salad I posted this month, but I joke around that September is still summer here in Southern California, so it’s still salad weather for me.

For the brown butter-grilled lettuce:
2 heads of Romaine lettuce
3 tbsp brown butter
a pinch of salt

Cut the Romaine lettuce in half, lengthwise, Brush both sides of the lettuce with brown butter and salt. Grill the lettuce on high heat for 2 minutes on each side.

For the grilled lemon:
1 lemon, washed
2 tbsp olive oil
a pinch of salt

Cut the lemon in half and drizzle olive oil and salt onto the cut sides. Place on the grill pan, searing them for 2 minutes before rotating them 90 degrees and grilling them a further 2 minutes.

For the dressing:
1/4 cup sesame paste
1 tbsp toasted white sesame seeds
1 tbsp miso paste
2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
1 tspn agave

Mix together to form your dressing.

For garnish:
Pecorino cheese