Fully Loaded Spinach Salad with Bacon and Blue Cheese

Photo from The Mom 100

I'm always up for a good spinach salad, and this one sounded like it had all the makings of a winner. Unfortunately, it was more of a middle-of-the-road experience than a salad I'll be dreaming about.

I served this alongside the Shredded Italian Beef I made, and while the salad itself was perfectly fine, the dressing was a bit of a letdown. It was supposed to be a simple vinaigrette, which should be pretty hard to mess up. Or so I thought!

I used sherry vinegar and was surprised by how little flavor it brought to the party. There was practically no tang or punch to it. I added more mustard, hoping to wake things up, but it still wasn't what I had in mind. Since I didn't have any red wine vinegar on hand, I added a splash of apple cider vinegar, which definitely helped. Even so, I wasn't particularly impressed with the finished dressing.

Now I'm wondering if the problem was the brand of sherry vinegar I purchased. It's not one I normally use, and perhaps it just didn't have the flavor I was expecting. Either way, I'm a firm believer that the dressing can make or break a salad, and this one didn't quite make the cut.

We did make a few changes to the salad, too. Neither Sherrie nor I are big fans of raw red onion, so we traded those out for strawberries. Maybe not the traditional substitution, but strawberries and spinach are a match made in salad heaven. I also added some chopped nuts for a little crunch. Since Sherrie isn't a fan of blue cheese (I know, how is that even possible?), we gave her salad feta while I happily kept the blue cheese on mine.

All in all, this is a simple, easy-to-customize salad. And that's the beauty of cooking: recipes are suggestions, not contracts! I'm glad we made a few adjustments because, despite the underwhelming dressing, the rest of the salad was really delicious.

Fully Loaded Spinach Salad with Bacon and Blue Cheese

Recipe from The Mom 100

Serves 4

• ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
• 3 tablespoons red wine or sherry vinegar
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 2 teaspoons honey
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
• 1 tablespoons warmed bacon fat reserved from cooking the bacon, optional
• 8 cups baby spinach
• ½ cup halved and thinly sliced red onion
• 4 ounces crumbled blue cheese
• 1 cup bacon lardons or crumbled cooked bacon

In a large bowl, combine the olive oil, vinegar, Dijon mustard, honey, salt and pepper. Whisk in the bacon fat, if using.

Add the spinach and red onion, and toss to coat with the dressing. Distribute over the blue cheese and bacon and gently toss again, or serve as is and toss at the table.