Frisée, apple, bacon and goat cheese salad

This frisée salad with apple, bacon and goat cheese with an apple cider honey mustard vinaigrette, is another salad that came as a result of “what is in the fridge or kitchen & how can I put these ingredients together?”

I had some frisée, some apple bacon – which gave me the idea to add apples-, some goat cheese, parsley, so of course I thought that all those ingredients would make a good salad. I love salads that are creative and that balance well different flavors and textures: salty, sweet, sour,crunchy, etc.

I also really like using fruit in salads (yeah I’m one of those people), most of the salads you find in restaurants have tomatoes –which is technically a fruit-, but it is used so much in salads that it’s not really that creative. Full disclosure, I use tomatoes in many of my salads.

I love to try using fruits like raspberries, blueberries, pears, oranges, apples, among others. Not as a fruit salad, but rather as a little something that provides some contrast to the other savory ingredients.Also, I’ve discovered that if my kids see a piece of fruit in their salad they suddenly become more excited about eating salad (but my kids are weird like that).

One of the great things about living in WA is the variety and quality of apples that are available. According to the Washington Apple Commission more than half of all apples grown in the US for fresh eating come from orchards in Washington state and Washington apples are sold in all 50 states and more than 50 countries (this is not sponsored, but just something I find really cool about my adoptive state). I also found it interesting that while Americans eat approximately 19 lbs of apples per year, Europeans eat about 46 lbs. I would have guessed it was the other way around.

In Ecuador my favorite type of apple was a very small yellow pinkish one, they were very tart, crunchy and sweet. I also have a thing for green apples, not the Granny Smith variety, but actual unripe green apples. We didn’t have any apple trees on our farm, but I remember going with school friends on hikes through farms and eating way too many green apples, it was probably a good thing since most of the time those apples never ripened that well (the region where we lived in Ecuador was not the best for growing apples).

Anyone who grew up in Ecuador will know that this fascination with green or sour unripe fruits is not that surprising. We love eating different green fruits, from green mangoes to green oranges to grosellas (a Malay gooseberry) with salt. Such a mouthwatering combination! Of course we (kids) were always told that this wasn’t good for us, there was sort of Ecuadorian urban legend that eating too many green fruits with salt would kill your red blood cells and give you cancer. However the whole “don’t do eat that” warning just made us crave unripe fruit + salt even more.

Whenever we would go out on a hike or a walk in the countryside we would always take a little bag of salt with us, just in case we found a mango tree or orange tree on the way and more than finding ripe fruit we felt like we hit gold when we would find green fruit.

This salad is very easy to make, if you don’t have frisee you can use any other salad greens, I made the vinaigrette with apple cider vinegar because I wanted to create a connection between the apples and the vinaigrette but it will also be good with a basic white wine vinegar.Also, since the bacon is very salty you really don’t need to add hardly any salt to the salad dressing.

Frisée, apple, bacon and goat cheese salad

Frisée salad with apple, bacon and goat cheese with an apple cider honey mustard vinaigrette.

4.94 from 15 votes

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Course: Salad

Cuisine: American, Pacific Northwest

Keyword: Apples, Bacon, Frisee salad, Frisée, apple, bacon and goat cheese salad, Goat cheese, Honey mustard vinaigrette

Prep Time: 15 minutes minutes

Total Time: 15 minutes minutes

Servings: 4 to 6

Ingredients

• 1 bunch of frisée washed and broken into pieces
• 1 apple core removed and sliced
• 6 oz bacon cut in small pieces and sautéed until crispy
• 4 oz goat cheese crumbled

Apple cider honey mustard vinaigrette

• 1 ½ tbs apple cider vinegar
• 1 tsp Dijon style mustard
• 1 tsp honey
• 2 tbs olive oil
• 1 garlic clove crushed
• 1 tbs finely chopped parsley
• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

• Combine all the ingredients for the vinaigrette or salad dressing in a jar, close it tight and shake until the ingredients are well mixed.
• Place the frisée, sliced apple, bacon and goat cheese in a salad bowl.
• Pour the dressing or vinaigrette over the salad and toss well.
• Serve immediately.

Preparation photos for this frisée, apple, bacon and goat cheese salad

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Mango, avocado and arugula salad

Poached pear and goat cheese salad

Watercress salad with avocado, orange and goat cheese

Spinach raspberry and gorgonzola salad