Our favorite salad recipe. Bacon Tomato Spinach Salad is a simple but flavorful side salad that can also double as an entree salad.
This Bacon Tomato Spinach Salad is so simple and full of flavor. This is our go to salad. No fuss, no hard work, no trying to remember 5-7 ingredients to make homemade dressing. Just put it all in a bowl and mix!
The Bacon
When you find recipes (like this one) that call for 4 slices of bacon just make the whole package of bacon. Pat the grease off the leftover bacon and put the leftovers in a ziplock bag or air tight container and refrigerated it. You will always find something to make with leftover bacon. I always do. Bacon makes everything better.
Spinach
Grab one of those 5 oz. prepackaged baby spinach bags that are ready to eat. Pick through the spinach and snap off any long stems.
Tomatoes
We use the Nature Sweet Cherub Salad tomatoes. I absolutely love them. They are so sweet that I can eat them by themselves. I use about a cup of these tomatoes and slice them in half.
Parmesan Cheese
I don’t buy bagged shredded or grated Parmesan or jarred Parmesan. You want to buy a block of Parmesan and grate it when you make the salad. Once you stop buying shredded or grated cheese and start buying blocks and shredding it yourself you will find it has a better fresher flavor.
Cheese tastes way better when you shred it yourself. Once you do it you won’t go back. I know the bags of shredded cheese is convenient but pale in comparison to flavor.
For this recipe I cut off a 1 oz. of parmesan from the block and shredded it myself. A kitchen scale is a essential for every kitchen especially to weigh cheese.
Dressing
Today we are going store bought. Buy Litehouse, Romano Caesar, Ultra Premium. It is found in the produce section usually next to the bagged salads. By far this is the best creamy Caesar dressing I have tried. You are more than welcome leave a comment on your favorite Caesar dressing. I would love to try it.
For this recipe I use 1/4 cup of dressing. When you mix the salad the Parmesan cheese, spinach and bacon is going to suck up the dressing. If you feel you need more dressing add about 1 tablespoon at a time. You don’t want to end up drowning out your salad.
When you are tossing your salad the tomatoes are going to sink to the bottom. You can just scoop from the bottom pulling the tomatoes up to the top. If you need to present the salad and want it to be pretty and all the tomatoes are at the bottom. Just get a new salad bowl and transfer the salad so the tomatoes will be on top and the salad bowl won’t have white dressing up and down the sides.
How to Serve
This salad goes great with grilled steak or chicken. This is meant to be a side salad. If you have something on the grill this salad is the perfect compliment to any grilled meat. You can turn this side salad in to an entree by adding grilled steak or chicken to it. Along with some toasty bread, mushrooms or red onion would be a good addition as well.
However, keeping to the recipe, it is a side salad and I don’t want it to be the star of the dinner. I want my steak or chicken to be the star. So if you must add extra ingredients like onion or mushrooms add sparingly.
Recipe for Bacon Tomato Spinach Salad
Bacon Tomato Spinach Salad
Ingredients
- 5 oz. bag of baby spinach.
- 1 cup cherry tomatoes sliced in half.
- 1 oz. Parmesan shredded
- 4 slices of crispy bacon crumbled.
- 1/4 cup creamy Caesar dressing
Instructions
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Place all ingredients in a large bowl and toss until the dressing has coated the salad.