Mix Bacon Straight Into Salad Dressing
Bacon can save the salad. There is no single salad recipe, but we have all had ones that called for a star ingredient. The only downside to just throwing in a handful of chopped bacon is that the damn mass falls to the bottom and is hard to pierce with a fork due to its crunchy tricks. Don’t waste the bacon at the bottom of the salad – try mixing it straight into the dressing.
You can mix bacon into many sauces ( or soups ) to subtly add meat, smoke, and salt, but I find salads really benefit from adding bacon. Crispy bacon breaks into countless tiny chunks of meat, weighed and suffocated by liquid dressing ingredients. Once mixed with the main ingredients of the salad, the oils and fats of the dressing coat the bacon bits and coat every bit and patch of vegetation. Instead of looking for lost pieces at the bottom, the bacon easily sticks to the ingredients of the salad, releasing delicious smoke and salt with every bite.
Luckily, making bacon dressing is easy. Depending on how much bacon you need, cook two to four strips of bacon until they are very crispy. I bake my bacon because it doesn’t require manual labor, I can simmer it to get even the fattest parts browned, and I don’t like messing around with splattering grease on the stove. You can use the wire rack to roast the bacon this way, or just line a baking sheet with foil and place the bacon directly on top of it. Try to get the strips to brown as evenly as possible, but any greasy bits will blend in anyway, so it’s not the end of the salad world. Place all dressing ingredients, along with cooked bacon strips, in a standard blender or immersion blender cup and blend. In about 20-30 seconds, you’ll have a mixed bacon salad dressing that you can pour over just about anything.
Adding bacon to a salad dressing this way works best with weaker dressings like oil and vinegar, Dijon vinaigrette, or buttermilk dressing. That doesn’t mean you can’t add it to thick and creamy dressings. In this case, break the bacon dry. You can do this in a food processor if you have a chopper. My food processor works or it doesn’t, so I bake the bacon very crispy, chop it finely, and then break it up with a mortar and pestle to get smaller pieces. Then simply toss it into the creamy dressing before adding it to the salad. Luckily, the thick dressing will hold up to thicker pieces of bacon, so you’re in good shape even if you have to finely chop it by hand.
This recipe is a wonderful honey-bacon Dijon dressing that I use with just about everything (with or without bacon). The added fat from the pork gives it a slightly creamy texture that, if you toss it in the fridge for ten minutes, takes on a fluffy, whipped texture.
Dijon salad dressing with honey and bacon
Ingredients:
- 4 strips of thinly sliced bacon, fried until crispy
- Juice of 1 lemon
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 teaspoons honey
- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- ¼ teaspoon salt
Place all ingredients in a blender, cover and blend. After 20 seconds, check the consistency of the bacon pieces and taste. Adjust salt, sour or sweetness to taste. Mix again if you want the bacon pieces to be thinner.