Holiday Spinach Salad with Bacon Dressing

A festive and stunning salad for your holiday table, this Spinach Salad with Bacon Dressing has roasted delicata squash, pomegranate, and pecans. It’s easy to prep ahead and toss together for your special meal.

The Perfect Hot Holiday Salad

Honestly, I could skip the dinner rolls and the mashed potatoes during holiday dinners. Give me a platter of roasted Brussels sprouts or a loaded salad, like this Spinach Salad with Hot Bacon Dressing, and I am excited.

Holiday food can and should be healthy! Nourish yourself and your family with special recipes that are loaded with flavor, textures, and the vitamins and minerals our bodies need to stay active and healthy through the winter months.

This salad has plenty of holiday worth flavors:

• Pomegranate and pecans are a fav combo of mine. If you don’t take the time to dress up your salads with fruit and nuts for weekday meals, make sure you grab these ingredients for holiday meals! Pomegranates are also a superfood, with powerful anti inflammatory properties, as well as being high in fiber.
• Roasted delicata squash is creamy, sweet, and a beautiful addition to meals.
• Did someone say BACON salad dressing? That’s right. Top off this masterpiece with a hot dressing loaded with fried shallots of bacon. I promise, this salad will disappear!

How to Make a Holiday Spinach Salad with Bacon Dressing

Step 1: Roast your delicata squash. If you don’t know how to cook delicata squash, hop on over to this article for photographed steps and a video.

Step 2: Make your Hot Bacon Dressing. This can be made ahead of time and heated up for your special meal. It’s simple to make — cook the bacon, fry shallots in the bacon fat, and then add the crumbled bacon back in along with some sweetener and vinegar. It’s a very special salad dressing!

Step 3: Assemble the salad by layering spinach, delicata squash, pomegranate, and pecans on a platter or in a salad bowl.

Step 4: Right before serving, toss the salad with the hot bacon dressing. If you have vegetarians at your holiday gathering, serve the dressing on the side and also offer a different dressing, like this Poppyseed Honey Mustard, or even just balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

Make this your Perfect Spinach Salad

Make it Vegan: This salad is vegan as written, except for the dressing. Instead of serving this with a hot bacon salad dressing, try serving this salad with my Poppyseed Honey Mustard Dressing, or even toss it in a simple mixture of lemon juice, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil.

Make it a Meal: Instead of serving this as a side dish, make it a special dinner by adding some extra protein. This is great with roasted chicken, hard boiled eggs, or roasted chickpeas.

Mix it up: If you can’t find delicata squash, use chunks of butternut squash or sliced and roasted acorn squash instead. Acorn squash can be roasted in the same method as the delicata squash used here.

Other Holiday Salads:

• Butternut, Millet and Spinach Salad
• Vibrant Winter Kale and Brussels Sprouts Salad
• Kale and Blood Orange Salad
• Roasted Winter Greens Salad, by The Endless Meal

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