Spinach salad, Cobb style.
The oven is hot to 400, I'm going to put some meaty bacon.
You only need six pieces, but make extra
'cause you know you're going to steal some,
into the oven and we're going to bake this bacon.
You don't have to flip it,
you don't have to do anything to it,
until it's super crisp and deeply golden.
Then, we're going to cut this into the large bacon bits.
We are also taking the rest of that package of bacon,
or a minimum of six slices and we're fine chopping it.
I get this nice and cold.
You can even pop it in the freezer for a couple of minutes
so you get a nice, fine chop on that bacon.
This is the bacon we're going to use
for the base of our dressing.
Of course, we have about a pound and a half
of clean spinach.
It started at about two pounds, I stemmed it.
We have spinach for our spinach salad.
If you're into hard boiled eggs,
instead of soft or medium boiled eggs,
you can buy these right in a sack as I did,
hard boiled egg.
So, instead of our leftovers, I'm using this smoked chicken,
super delicious,
but I am going to heat it up and crisp the skin backup
even though it's a fully cooked product.
I'm just going to throw it into a little griddle pan,
or grill pan, or skillet
and I'm going to char up a bunch of scallions.
One bunch, trimmed of the root and,
and I've got this other medium high heat
in a nonstick skillet of any kind
and I just sprayed it lightly with a little oil.
In this pan,
I have some olive oil getting hot to brown or mushrooms.
This is three quarters of a pound to a pound
of cremini mushrooms, or baby portabellas.
Use any mushroom or mix of mushrooms you like.
Right now, let's get the mushrooms going.
Mushrooms, I let brown first before I salt them,
then I added my fresh thyme,
couple tablespoons of fresh thyme.
Small handful.
So, the mushrooms are nice and brown
and I have a little transfer pan here.
Let me get the mushrooms out
and start our dressing.
In the same skillet, another drizzle about of olive oil
'cause this is our dressing now
and we turn the stove way down.
Bacon should go for a minute or two first
and let it render those little bits.
So our dressing is a combination
of a little bit of bacon fat,
this is very lean, meaty bacon that I finely chopped,
and a little olive oil.
Ideally, you want about a quarter to a third of a cup of fat
in the pan for up to two pounds of spinach and ingredients.
Now to that, I'm gonna add a little black pepper.
I'm going to season up my mushrooms as well.
Now, we're going to add to our rendered bacon,
shallots,
one or two cloves of garlic,
and then always with dark greens,
we're going to season them with a little nutmeg as well.
Lovely.
Now for the acid,
we're going to use cider vinegar,
which I keep in the fridge after I open it.
You want a lot, douse the pan, keep your head back.
Again, about a third of a cup.
So now, we're going to add,
this is called More Than Mustard.
It's a sweet hot mustard.
It's a honey mustard also from Oscars.
It's delicious, or you can of course, guess what?
Just combine honey and mustard,
a few tablespoons of each.
Now, we're going to do the fun part.
We're going to wilt in the greens
and turn this sucker off.
So I just added a little nutmeg.
I was just finishing that up to our spinach salad.
The greens are warm, but as you can see, not fully wilted,
you just barely get them going,
let them keep a little crunch to them, guys.
So now, we're going to assemble
our giant crispy pieces of bacon.
So, we're going to do our smoked chicken
kind of center court here, so to speak
and our charred green onion, or scallion
our bacon,
our blue,
our eggs
radish,
and of course, our mushrooms.
There you go.