Favorite Strawberry Bacon Salad

Tell Me About This Strawberry Bacon Salad

Texture: While we love the strawberries and pops of creaminess from the cheese, this salad is all about crunch courtesy of the romaine lettuce, bacon, and pecans. Flavor: We’re amazed by the amount of flavor packed into a salad that calls for just 5 ingredients: sweet, savory, sharp, and nutty. The honey balsamic vinaigrette is the perfect finishing touch, bringing all these wonderful flavors together. Ease: Salads are usually pretty easy to throw together and this one is no exception—just chop, toss, and serve. Time: If you don’t have cooked bacon, set aside some time to cook it first. We usually use the stovetop for bacon. After that, the salad takes about 15 minutes to throw together.

Suggestions for Serving this Strawberry Bacon Salad

This salad is our usual go-to for entertaining, such as alongside Christmas dinner, at bridal showers, baby showers, or really anytime you need a guaranteed delicious (and easy!) dish. It’s also a favorite savory option when planning our menu of Easter brunch recipes. When we make it for dinner, we usually add something substantial like grilled chicken or salmon. We’ve also added 1/2 cup of chopped red onion or chickpeas and/or 1 sliced avocado for extra flavor and texture. Sometimes we arrange hard-boiled eggs on top like a cobb salad, too. When preparing the strawberry bacon salad as a side dish, we often serve it with baked macaroni and cheese, corn fritters, crab cakes, or baked lemon herb salmon.

Some Notes on the Ingredients

Strawberries. Use the juiciest strawberries you can find—they make an even more flavorful salad. Nuts. We love pecans, but chopped walnuts or sliced almonds are great options too. Blue cheese. Blue cheese (bleu cheese)—you either love it or you hate it. Sure, it won’t win any beauty awards and its scent is undoubtedly suspicious, but its bold flavor is one of the best parts of this salad especially when paired with sweet strawberries and honey balsamic vinaigrette. If blue cheese just isn’t your thing, you have options! Either feta cheese or goat cheese (like I use in this maple-roasted squash kale salad) work too. Honey balsamic vinaigrette. What we love most about this strawberry bacon salad is the homemade vinaigrette. We typically see this salad with a poppy seed dressing of sorts, but the honey balsamic vinaigrette takes it to an entirely new level. It’s very easy to make and you can shake it up ahead of time.

PS: If you have leftover bacon and a furry friend at home, try my homemade bacon dog treats!