Classic Spinach Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing Recipe (video)
A bit of a classic with a bunch of variations, this spinach salad with a warm basic dressing had a big revival in the 90's and has sort of stuck around since then. No wonder, it's super delicious and pretty easy. The acid of the vinegar counters the unctuousness of the bacon fat and everything is tied together with the bright fresh green of the spinach leaves. We prefer baby spinach for this, but you could use full sized spinach that has been slightly cut down to size.
We recommend a nice streaky bacon in nice thick slices, not just those paper-thin slices in most grocery store bacons. You need to make sure enough bacon fat renders out to cook the shallots and emulsify with the mustard and vinegar. If you wanted, you could whisk continuously while drizzling a thin stream of the bacon/shallot mixture into the oil and it would come out thicker, almost like a hollandaise, but that's a lot more work. Personal preference if you want a much thicker dressing.
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