Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Vinaigrette Recipe
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This spinach salad makes for a great starter or even a meal by itself. Instead of following tradition and using olive oil in the dressing, we opted for the fat rendered off the bacon to give the vinaigrette optimal flavor.
Game plan: To make cutting the bacon easier, chill it in the freezer for about 20 to 25 minutes until it firms up.
This recipe was featured as part of both our Winter Cabin Fever menu and our Supercharge with Superfoods photo gallery.
- 9 ounces thick-sliced smoked bacon, small dice
- 1 medium shallot, minced
- 1/2 cup red wine vinegar
- 1 1/2 teaspoons packed light brown sugar
- 3/4 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- Kosher salt
- Freshly ground black pepper
- 2 pounds spinach, washed, stemmed, torn into bite-size pieces, and thoroughly dried
- 3/4 cup toasted pecans, coarsely chopped
- Heat a large frying pan over medium heat. Add the bacon and cook, stirring occasionally, until browned and crispy, about 4 minutes. Remove the bacon to a paper-towel-lined plate and set aside. Discard all but 3 tablespoons of the fat.
- Place the pan with the remaining bacon fat over medium heat, add the shallot, and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Whisk in the vinegar, brown sugar, and Dijon mustard; remove from heat and season with salt and pepper.
- Combine the spinach, reserved bacon, and pecans in a large bowl. Add the vinaigrette and toss to coat. Season with additional salt and pepper and serve immediately.
Beverage pairing: Niklas Sauvignon Blanc, Alto Adige, Italy. This dish is rich with bacon fat and tart with vinegar, so a high-acid wine is needed to stand up to both. This bright Sauvignon from the northern reaches of Italy’s Alto Adige has the tartness and pungency to balance the dish.
I've made this with white vinegar and white sugar, but I can't wait to try it with the red wine vinegar, brown sugar and Dijon! My salad also has thin circles of red onion, hard boiled egg slices and slivers of mushrooms. I can't wait to merge them.
I make this often and like to add in quartered hard boiled eggs.
dig,
The spinach definitely handles the dressing much better.
I did not use all the fat. I added dried cranberries and used balsamic vinegar. Thought this was really good and will make it again
Hm I just made this but with Romain instead of spinach. Anyways I found the dressing to be really acidic and I guess it probably works better with something heavier like spinach but still, are you sure the raio is 3 tblsp of fat to 1/2 of vinegar?
This was really good. I added dried cranberries as well. Next time I would cut down on the brown sugar, though, as it was a tad too sweet for me, but otherwise good proportions.
For a less fatty version strain the grease through a coffee filter.
Just wondering, how this is an intermediate level of difficulty?
The dressing sounds really tasty...tempted to make it tonight, but not tempted to have to run an extra mile to burn the fat off... =)
I make something similar to this. For those of you who don't like sweet so much (I'm not too big into brown sugar) or the heaviness of the mustard, substitute these two with lemon juice. After pouring your bacon fat over the salad (while still really hot to wilt the leaves), pour red wine vinegar and lemon juice together in the hot skillet (about 3:2 lemon to vinegar). Once its smoking, pour that over the salad.
Also, I prefer to use a mixture of romaine and iceberg lettuce in this dish, as the wilting by the hot fat and the other ingredients causes spinach leaves and really green, softer lettuce to wilt to the point of sogginess. The crisp of iceberg and the flavor of romaine go really well with this dish and absorb the flavors without becoming soggy while not being abrasively crisp. Add garlic powder as well when tossing salad.
This is pure tasty.