I love the chop style salad because you get all the flavors in each bite. I tend to have about a 50/50 ratio of all the toppings to lettuce. If you are going to sit down and eat a salad as a meal it needs to have enough goodies in it to satisfy your hunger. Lots of texture, flavors, greens, veggies, proteins and good fats. This Shrimp and Bacon Chopped Salad is a take on surf and turf with salty bacon and succulent shrimp. Fresh avocado and Kalamata olives add an extra creamy salty layer along with the olive oil. Lemon, salt and pepper give a fresh zing to the seafood. Not a lot of fuss in the dressing on this one, simple and perfect just the way it is.
If you were to tell me a couple years ago that we eat salads for dinner at least two or three times a week I would have called the crazy card on you! I will admit it was not easy at first because I was not making the salads right. I was skipping out on what we needed to fill our bellies and make our brains happy. I have stopped the salads that have nothing in them, the dull, boring and tasteless don’t live here anymore.
Shrimp and Bacon Chopped Salad is a terrific way to get in a load of vegetables all at one time. Bacon is the star of the show here as well as the shrimp, there is a whole package of bacon! It gets such a bad rap but there are ways to make bacon better. Use a bacon that has no antibiotics, fed a vegetarian non gmo diet, uncured with no added sugar. When cooked at a medium heat you’re not burning the bacon fat. As long as the fat has not reached a smoke point what is left in the pan I save it in a small glass jar to cook with it another day.
Shrimp and Bacon Chopped Salad
Ingredients;
1 12 oz pack bacon
1 ½ c cooked shrimp
1 c artichoke hearts
1 avocado
¼ c Kalamata olives
½ lemon
½ t pink Himalayan salt
½ t pepper
¼ c EVOO
1 5 oz box of spinach/butter lettuce mix
Instructions;
- Cut the bacon into bit size and cook on medium. While cooking the bacon chop up the cooked shrimp into bite size pieces. Cut the avocado and artichoke hearts up to a medium dice. Loosely chop the olives and remove any pits.
- When the bacon is cooked drain the bits of bacon on a paper towel and set aside. Get the dressing ready in a small dish with the lemon (about 2-3 T on a ½ lemon) salt, pepper and olive oil. Stir this mixture up with a spoon and set aside until ready to assemble for the meal.
- Chop the lettuce into smaller pieces, run your knife over the lettuce about 20 times in a crisscross fashion on the cutting board. In a large salad bowl add the lettuce, bacon, shrimp, artichoke, avocado and olives. Pour the dressing over the top and toss the entire mixture together. Divide, serve immediately and enjoy!
Prep time 10 min
Cook time 20 min
Total time 30 min
Serves 2-4