BLT Salad
Gourmet BLT salad with fire-roasted tomatoes, crispy bacon, charred grilled croutons, and bacon vinaigrette dressing.
Servings: 4 servings
Ingredients
- 1/2 pound bacon cut into bite sized pieces
- 2 tbs minced shallots
- 1 1/2 tbs red wine vinegar
- 1 tsp fresh thyme or 1/2 tsp dried
- 1/4 tsp kosher salt
- 1/8 tsp freshly ground black pepper
- 1 pint cherry tomatoes stemmed
- 1 large crusty sandwich roll
- 12 oz mixed salad greens or mixed lettuce
Instructions
- Dice bacon into bite size pieces.
- Place a large skillet over medium heat and cook the bacon until crisp.
- Remove bacon from pan and reserve the bacon grease in a measuring cup. You need a little more than 1/3 cup. Add olive oil if needed to reach the amount.
- In a medium bowl, mix shallot, vinegar, thyme, salt and pepper.
- Slowly add the bacon grease to the bowl while whisking to create a bacon-flavored dressing.
- Add a little bit of dressing to the tomatoes.
- Grill tomatoes over medium heat in a grill basket until skins begin to crack and char, roughly 4-5 minutes.
- Cut the sandwich roll in half and brush the cut side with a little of the dressing.
- Grill the roll over direct medium heat until bread begins to char and develop nice grill marks.
- Remove bread from grill and cut into large croutons.
- Combine grilled tomatoes and bread croutons into the bowl of dressing.
- Toss the mixture.
- Arrange a bed of lettuce into bowls and top with the tomato, bread, bacon and dressing mixture. Spoon a little more dressing over the top.
- Serve and enjoy.
Notes
This recipe is adapted from Weber's Charcoal Grilling. The key is grilling the tomatoes for that fire-roasted flavor and charring the bread for croutons. The bacon grease makes an excellent vinaigrette base. This salad is full of flavor with the combination of bacon, grilled tomatoes, and charred bread.