Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing
This one, ladies and gentlemen, is a keeper. One of those recipes that go in the mental repertoire to serve as a reliable fallback for any occasion, provided all the hungry mouths in need of feeding eat bacon.
And there are certainly plenty of people who can’t, don’t, or won’t eat bacon for plenty of very good reasons, and it is a point of pride for me to accommodate the dietary needs of the people I cook for.
But that just makes for all the more enjoyment when I do get to pork it up a notch.
To quote that old commercial, “Bacon bacon bacon bacon bacon bacon bacon. Bacon? BACON!” The all-powerful flavor of pork is what makes this salad sing. Not so much the bacon in the salad – which certainly doesn’t hurt – as the use of bacon fat in the dressing in place of oil.
And now let me freely confess one of my many culinary failings: I am terrible at cooking bacon. I always end up with half-burned/half-raw strips that are so curled up that I can’t get the raw bits to cook. My advice, which I so often fail to follow, is not to crowd the pan. I hope you can follow it better than I can.
But even if you don’t, you’ll still be in good shape.
Bacon.
Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing
1 bunch spinach, washed
8 strips thick-cut bacon
2 eggs
1 medium red onion, sliced
3 tbsp. red wine vinegar
1 tbsp. sugar
salt and pepper
- Place eggs in a sauce pan and cover with cold water by about an inch. Bring water to a boil, turn off heat, and leave for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, remove eggs and place in ice water to stop cooking. Peel and slice.
- Bacon.
- While eggs are cooking, cook bacon and remove to drain. Reserve 3 tbsp. of bacon fat.
- Combine spinach, egg, and onion in a salad bowl. Crumble bacon over the top.
- Bacon.
- In a sauce pan, warm the 3 tbsp. of bacon fat over low heat. Whisk in vinegar, sugar, salt, and pepper.
- Bacon.
- Bacon.
- Pour hot dressing over salad and toss.
- Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaacon.
Try baking the bacon instead, it works a lot better than pan frying for me.