Posted on May 18 2017
The most tasty salad ever? No doubt, it’s this Balsamic Mushroom Bacon Spinach Salad! A truly yummy combo, perfect for all seasons and all occasions – it’s a versatile salad that looks just as inviting and delicious as it tastes! Perfect for entertaining or as a light midweek meal.
If you read my last post, you’ll know that we’re coming out of a few days of constant rain and chilly wind over here…Which has lead me to want to make all the comforting, homely, hearty meals that my brain can conjure up.
Case and point being the Baked Chicken Barley Kale Stew that I made yesterday, which is by far my favourite chicken stew recipe to date!! Give it a try, I guarantee you will have a happy heart and a very HAPPY TUMMY. (Side Note: Barley is awesome and so healthy! If you haven’t tried barley, you really should.)
Give these salads a go: My Roast Beet Butternut Basil Goat Cheese Salad, my Grape Spinach Zucchini Harvest Salad, my Broccoli Pineapple Pecan Pumpkin Seed Salad and my Red Cabbage Spinach & Beetroot Detox Salad.
I served that very same Baked Chicken Barley Kale Stew today (which only gets better the second day, like most stews) when family came over for lunch, with this delightful Balsamic Mushroom Bacon Spinach Salad to many murmurs of deliciousness, yumminess and satisfied tummy rumbles (okay maybe not the rumbles!).
We also had a nice big loaf of garlic French bread with melted cheese, and it might just have been one of my favourite meals of all time! I’m sure it had something to do with the weather, but food is just that much more amazing when it matches the season you’re in, and this meal certainly ticked all the right boxes!
Back to this Balsamic Mushroom Bacon Spinach Salad. It’s a unique pairing of flavours and I have to admit, I threw this salad together really quickly after wondering what I could make with the baby spinach and mushrooms that I had in the fridge…
So I fried up some crispy golden bacon bits, sautéed the mushrooms and finished them off with balsamic vinegar, which I let caramelise and go all golden brown and amazing (the mushies are the star of the show for sure!!) and some feta cheese. I found myself with a salad I absolutely LOVE, my family really LOVED, and it’s SO simple!!
Sometimes the simpler the better! Less is more and all that.
It really is true with some things – definitely with this salad. It doesn’t need anything more to make it complete, scrumptious, full of flavour and really healthy. I’m not normally one to cook with bacon, but in this case, this salad wouldn’t be the same without it. I won’t be eating this every day, but on the odd occasion, it’s a delicious salad treat!!
There’s plenty of goodness in the spinach and the mushrooms to make up for the bacon bits!!
Please do try out this recipe, and let me know what you think in the comments below.
A truly yummy combo, perfect for all seasons and all occasions - it's a versatile salad that looks just as inviting and delicious as it tastes! Perfect for entertaining or as a light midweek meal.
- 200 g streaky bacon sliced into small bits
- 400 g button mushrooms thickly sliced
- 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
- Salt & ground black pepper to taste
- 3 large handfuls baby spinach
- 100 g feta sliced into cubes or crumbled
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Fry the bacon in a dry frying pan (no oil) until crispy - takes about 7 minutes. Spoon the bacon out of the pan (leaving the fat in the pan), and drain the oil off the bacon on kitchen paper.
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Depending on how much bacon fat is left in the pan, you may have to pour some out - you want about 1 tbsp of fat in the pan.
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Fry the mushroom slices in the bacon fat until they are really browning. Add the balsamic vinegar and stir in, allow to caramelise slightly over the heat. Check that the mushrooms are cooked through, then season with salt & ground black pepper to taste.
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Arrange the spinach on a salad platter, top with the mushrooms, then the bacon bits, and then the feta.
