Bacon & egg salad with blue cheese
This egg and bacon salad with blue cheese and watercress is inspired by Ina Paarman and the deliciously simple recipe she produced for her February newsletter. I shot this back in November and have been eating it ever since. Hers is perfect in its simplicity with baby butter leaves, topped with quartered boiled eggs, crumbled blue cheese and chives. She used her blue cheese dressing, which is one of my favourites in her range.
I decided to dress up my salad with a few extra bits and made a creamy blue cheese dressing from scratch. Like a Caesar salad, I could eat this all the time. It’s accidentally low carb but I’m thinking of adding croutons the next time.
How to make this bacon & egg salad
*Cooks notes – Make as much salad as necessary. The dressing will be enough for a large salad and a bit more than for these quantities. It’s great to drizzle on so many things and lovely with chicken. I used baby gem because it’s crunchier than butter lettuce, but you can use either.
I added watercress because eggs and cress are a perfect combination and I love the flavour and texture it adds. It is however totally optional. I’ve used a mild firm blue cheese from Woolies called Blue Pearl that crumbles. A Danish-style blue would work well too, as would a creamy blue cheese, but this can be difficult to crumble over the salad.
A few of my favourite salads:
Vietnamese rice noodle salad with chicken
Spinach salad with grilled zucchini, peas, feta and mint
Moroccan carrot and fennel salad with sultanas and pistachios
Bacon & egg salad with blue cheese
Ingredients
Salad:
- 2 – 3 baby gem or butter lettuce
- A small handful of watercress
- A small bunch of chives chopped
- 125 gms streak bacon chopped
- 3 eggs hard-boiled
- 60 – 100gms of blue cheese depending on how much you like
Blue cheese dressing:
- 50 gms blue cheese see above and I used the same blue cheese as I did in my salad
- ½ cup Hellman’s mayonnaise
- ½ cup full fat Greek-style yoghurt
- 1 Tbsp white wine vinegar
- 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
- Black pepper
- 1 Tbsp chopped chives optional
Instructions
- Add all the ingredients to the bowl of a small food processor and blend until smooth. Stir through the chopped chives if you are adding them.
- Boil the eggs, cool, peel and cut into quarters.
- While the eggs are boiling, fry your bacon until crispy and then drain on paper.
- Just before you want to serve this salad, arrange the lettuce leaves on flat platter and top with all the bits. Drizzle over the dressing and serve.
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