Wilted Spinach Salad with Bacon (Keto Spinach Salad)

 

Spinach bacon salad with a warm bacon dressing makes a delicious side dish everyone will love that can be enjoyed year round.

If you haven't ever had a wilted bacon salad with a hot bacon dressing, you're in for a treat! Just make sure to serve it immediately to best enjoy the savory blend of spinach, eggs, bacon and hot dressing.

I first tasted spinach salad with bacon at my aunt's house many many years ago. She frequently served it at family gatherings and at summer BBQ's, and boy was I hooked! It was love at first bite. 

It's truly been one of my favorite all-time salads and wanted to update it to make a low carb, no sugar wilted spinach salad recipe. This is a keto spinach salad too if you're following a ketogenic diet, plus it's gluten free and paleo too.

And no need to reserve bacon and eggs for breakfast when you can have a spinach salad with bacon and eggs instead!

What's In Spinach Salad With Bacon?

The body of the spinach salad only has 4 ingredients, but that's all you need when it's filled with hearty goodness like bacon, eggs, and avocado.

When making wilted bacon salad, some people pick the stems off of the spinach and others leave the baby spinach stems on. I don't have a problem with eating spinach stems and let most of them on the spinach pieces. 

By "most," having a food blog meant I wanted the photos to be as pretty as possible, which meant I removed the stems from the top layer of baby spinach leaves.

You could also use full size torn spinach leaves instead of baby spinach, but buying a bag of pre-washed baby spinach makes this recipe even easier. 

• 1-6 oz bag of baby spinach
• 2 hard boiled eggs (instant pot recipe)
• 2 cups sliced mushrooms
• 3-4 slices cooked and crumbled bacon (bacon in oven recipe)

We didn't add avocado to the spinach salad recipe, but that would be such an amazing addition! Feel free!

And now for the dressing! This might not be the most beautiful photo, but man, it sure tastes amazing!

Hot Bacon Dressing Ingredients

While just the spinach salad with bacon is delicious and could be eaten with any of your favorite salad dressings. One of the best parts of this recipe is truly the hot bacon dressing that gets simmered on the stovetop and drizzled over the spinach salad right before serving.

This is where the name wilted spinach salad comes from...the hot bacon dressing recipe partially wilts some of the spinach pieces when you drizzle it onto the spinach salad with bacon.

Here's what you'll need to make the hot bacon dressing:

• ¼ cup olive oil or avocado oil
• 2 T bacon grease
• 2 T ketchup (this no sugar Paleo Keto brand is our favorite)
• 2 T apple cider vinegar
• 1 T Worchester sauce
• ½ teaspoon stevia or  1 T honey
• ¼ medium onion, grated or finely minced

We've always made the wilted bacon salad with olive oil but I think avocado oil would also make an amazing substitute!

You might not necessarily be trying to make this a keto or paleo spinach salad recipe, but if you are, we highly recommend Primal Kitchen's no sugar ketchup. It only includes natural ingredients and works for the majority of dietary restrictions someone could have. 

And while Worchester isn't paleo, an easy swap I do regularly when I'm out of it is to use no sugar fish sauce or even coconut aminos in a pinch.

Our original family recipe included 1 T of sugar, but swapping a ½ teaspoon of stevia instead of sugar gave this recipe a hint of sweetness that blends perfectly with the salty bacon and savory warm bacon dressing. Honey would also make a fabulous substitute! 

How to Make Wilted Spinach Salad

Making wilted spinach salad with bacon is super easy to do, it involves a little bit of prep work since you'll need hard-boiled eggs and pre-cooked bacon.

To get this recipe made as quickly as possible, while your bacon is cooking and you're making the hard-boiled eggs, prep your ingredients and be simmering your warm bacon dressing.

Wilted Spinach Salad Tips

My favorite way to make hard-boiled eggs is in an instant pot. Seriously, it makes such a huge difference! I didn't believe it until I tried it for myself if you've ever been frustrated over egg parts that break off as you peel, using an instant pot to make your hard-boiled eggs is the key to perfect eggs every single time.

And while you can easily fry bacon on the stove, if you wanted to cook an entire package of bacon, my hands-down favorite way to do that is making bacon in the oven. 

I mean, can you really just cook a few slices of bacon and ignore the rest of the package?

Regardless of how you cook your bacon, make sure to reserve 2 T of the bacon grease, it's a critical component in the warm bacon dressing.

Making Spinach Salad with Bacon

Add the baby spinach leaves in a bowl, again, this is assuming you're using pre-washed ready to go bagged baby spinach.

If you bought regular spinach, you'll, of course, need to wash it first and cut off the big stem pieces. Regular spinach leaves get torn into small leaf pieces, baby spinach stems get left whole. And it's optional if you want to remove the stems from the baby spinach.

Arrange the sliced mushrooms, hard-boiled eggs, and crumbled bacon on top of the baby spinach leaves.

Combine the hot bacon dressing ingredients together in a small skillet and heat to a simmer, for about 5 minutes.

Pour the warm bacon dressing over the spinach salad, toss and serve immediately.

The spinach salad with bacon does cool down quickly, so it's definitely at it's peak when you eat it right away.

Enjoy!