Warm Spinach Mushroom Salad with Bacon Vinaigrette

This is the classic wilted spinach salad recipe with mushrooms and a warm bacon vinaigrette you've been looking for. This was on the menu at my first restaurant for years. I learned it from a chef from Italy. It's a fresh and healthy, low carb salad that doesn't get bogged down by thick dressings. 

This salad recipe has followed me for a while, subconsciously. Yes it's just a spinach and mushroom salad, yes the ingredients (minus the hen of the woods) are not new in any way, shape or form, since every Perkins and Applebee's probably has a spinach salad with bacon dressing.

At the same time, it's a completely new salad that represents my growth as a cook, in three particular stages from when I was 17, until now.

Variations in Restaurants

The first time I made a spinach salad with "hot bacon" dressing it was at a steakhouse around my hometown of Willmar Minnesota called Melvin's on the Lake.

At Melvin's, everything for the salad came out of a bag or a jug, including the dressing: an opaque substance from Sysco that looked like wallboard paste with something only distantly resembling bacon in it. As you can expect, it tasted like the ingredients sound.

The second time I made the salad was working for a chef from Rome at Trattoria Da Vinci in St. Paul-it was a little better this time. Imported pancetta took the place of the jugged dressing, and the spinach was actually tossed with the dressing, as opposed to the dressing just being glugged on top.

Instead of topping it with sliced hard boiled eggs like I did at Melvin's, we grated the yolks like cheese, which I always thought was a fun touch.

We used red wine vinegar to de-glaze the pan too, part of what makes the salad taste so good. This time I ate the salad, it was delicious.

At my first restaurant I made the version I'm sharing with you here, with hen of the woods or maitake mushrooms. The difference from the other two salads from the past is that all of the ingredients are the best that I can find: good local spinach, high quality red wine vinegar, homemade bacon, local eggs, and or course local wild mushrooms.

It's the best version of the old salad I've had, and we regularly had people tell us it was not only the best spinach salad they'd had, but the best salad, period.

Well, except for one time a guy said his mushroom spinach salad wasn't "wilted enough", but he was a crochety old guy that complained about everything from the size of his coffee cup to the way the server described the dessert menu.

Adapting the recipe 

There's a few different ways you can adapt this. Here's a few ideas. 

• Good, fresh spinach from a garden is the best, but baby spinach from a bag will work too. 
• Some people like a little chopped red onion mixed in. I don't, but you can add a small amount if you like. I soak my cut red onions in cold water for 15 minutes before adding to the salad at the end. 
• If you serve it with a slice of bread and some cheese or a cup of soup it can make a good light meal or lunch.
• Use beef bacon instead of regular bacon.

Similar Recipes

I have a few other recipes you might like if you enjoy this too, like Brown Butter-Sage Hen of the Woods, and Simple Roasted Hen of the Woods.

Related Posts

Hen of the Woods

Hen of the Woods Mushroom Recipes

Print Recipe

5 from 1 vote

Hen of the Woods-Spinach Salad, With Bacon Vinaigrette

Classic American spinach and bacon salad with hen of the woods mushrooms

Prep Time15 minutes mins

Cook Time5 minutes mins

Total Time20 minutes mins

Course: Salad

Cuisine: American

Keyword: Bacon dressing, Hen of the woods mushroom, spinach salad

Servings: 2 Servings

Calories: 267kcal

Author: Alan Bergo

Cost: 5

Equipment

• Cast iron skillet
• large mixing bowl

Ingredients

• 3 ounces fresh hen of the woods mushrooms broken into small clusters roughly the size of your thumb or larger
• 4 ounces fresh spinach washed and cleaned
• 2 Tablespoons olive oil, such as extra virgin olive oil
• 2 tablespoons high quality red wine vinegar
• 2 hard boiled eggs: whites sliced yolks reserved for grating
• 2 ounces high quality slab bacon diced ½ inch
• Kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

Instructions

• Heat the bacon and the olive oil in a cast iron skillet or saute pan and render slowly until lightly browned.
• Push the bacon to one side of the pan, then add the hen of the woods and cook until caramelized, about 5 minutes.
• Season the mushrooms to taste with salt and pepper, deglaze the pan with the red wine vinegar and stir to release the bacon drippings.
• Pour the hot mixture over the spinach in a salad bowl, add the egg whites, toss, taste the seasoning and adjust as needed.
• Divide the mixture evenly between two room temperature salad plates, grate the yolks with a cheese or microplane grater over each plate (they may crumble a bit, that's ok) and serve immediately.

Notes

Hen of the woods are really good here, but many different mushrooms could be used, especially oysters, or chicken of the woods

Nutrition

Serving: 3oz | Calories: 267kcal | Carbohydrates: 4g | Protein: 7g | Fat: 26g | Saturated Fat: 6g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 3g | Monounsaturated Fat: 15g | Trans Fat: 0.04g | Cholesterol: 19mg | Sodium: 236mg | Potassium: 514mg | Fiber: 2g | Sugar: 1g | Vitamin A: 5327IU | Vitamin C: 17mg | Calcium: 60mg | Iron: 2mg