Garden Salad, Bacon Dressing
Feeling a bit nostalgic recently, I decided to pull out the stops preparing the old fashioned Bacon Dressing for today’s Garden Salad. There is no embellishment, no thickener, no water, in fact, not even salt and pepper, more like the preparation style that lots of the Mom’s used when I was growing up, getting the food onto the dinner tables of commonly large families as quickly and timely as possible.
I love Bacon Dressing and the balance of the sweet tart between the sugar and vinegar, and then there is the bacon grease, who would’ve thought? Really. Who thought up the idea of using bacon grease in something raw like spinach salad? Though much like toppling some sliced potatoes into hot grease and thus inventing French fries, I’m happy it was discovered.
Bacon Dressing also doesn’t require being tossed together with only spinach, and in today’s Garden Salad we’ve used assorted garden green varieties.
Grown in gardens or containers, once these greens start producing it seems the more you pick the more they grow, not too bad a deal for the limited amount of effort involved, plant, water, clip. Throughout the entire spring season.
Like many things in life, it’s important to treasure the pleasures while they last, for once the season ends, it ends. But before that happens, I’ll be happily snipping and clipping enjoying each among the fresh salads to be had, including Garden Salad, Bacon Dressing.
Garden Salad, Bacon Dressing
Ingredients
- 6-7 cups mixed baby garden lettuces, washed, dried in a salad spinner
- 1 small red onion, halved, then halved again, sliced thinly into crescents
- 4 hard boiled eggs, peeled, sliced in half lengthwise
- 4 handfuls seasoned, grilled, chicken cubes (rotisserie chicken may be substituted)
- Bacon Dressing:
- 7-8 slices bacon, cooked crisp, cooled on paper towel lined plate, then chopped
- bacon grease, reserved from cooking bacon
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup white wine vinegar
Instructions
- Preparing the Bacon Dressing: On medium heat, warm the reserved bacon grease in the pan, add in the sugar, stir to dissolve, pour in the vinegar and continue cooking, stirring until the sugar is fully dissolved and the mixture has incorporated, around three to five minutes
- Preparing the Salad: Mix lettuce into a large salad bowl with the red onion. Toss bacon dressing throughout. Transfer salad evenly between 4 bowls then top with hard boiled egg halves sprinkled with a pinch of salt, chopped bacon, and the cubed, grilled chicken
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