Blue Cheese Chopped Salad

This salad is ADDICTING. Blue cheese chopped salad has all the flavors and textures you are looking for in a salad. Salty bacon, sweet and savory creamy blue cheese dressing, nutty, toasted sesame seeds, crisp red onions and blue cheese crumble. Thinly sliced ribbons of sweet romaine make this the perfect salad that you are looking for on a Summer day.

Ingredients

3 heads of romaine lettuce, washed, dried and sliced in thin ribbons

1 medium sized red onion, finely diced

2 ounces of sesame seeds, toasted

1/2 lb of bacon, cooked crisp and finely diced

crumbled blue cheese (approximately 4 ounces)

2/3 cup of white sugar

1 cup of white wine vinegar

1.5 cups of mild salad oil, I used avocado oil (olive oil will be too strong for this)

2 ounces of blue cheese

1 tablespoon of salt

Instructions

Wash your romaine lettuce really well, dry the lettuce, cut into very think ribbons, you can also chop this after. You want bite size bites, not large chunks. You may want to use a salad spinner. I lined a bowl with paper towels and let the lettuce air out in the fridge for an hour to remove as much moisture as possible.

Cook your bacon in a skillet, When the bacon is cooked, remove and drain on a plate with paper towels. Carefully wipe out the pan of bacon grease, leave a tiny amount and add your sesame seeds. Toast low and slow. Stir often, These toast up quickly, so make sure they do not burn. They seem like they are taking forever to toast, then all of a sudden they get very toasted quickly. Let the sesame seeds cool completely before adding to the salad.

Chop up the bacon into small bite sized pieces. Also let this cool completely before adding to salad.

Crumble the blue cheese, you can use as much or as little as you prefer for the salad topping. Reserve two ounces for the dressing.

In a blender, add the oil, sugar, salt, vinegar and the 2 ounces of blue cheese and blend well. You can use the dressing right away, but it tastes better if it sits overnight. You can also store this dressing in the fridge in a jar for up to two weeks. *it won't last that long though

To serve the salad, toss the romaine with the bacon, sesame seeds and onion. I leave the dressing and the blue cheese on the side. But if you are serving this as a dinner you can toss the dressing immediately before serving and then top with blue cheese crumbles.