A salad needs only a few ingredients and a fantastic dressing to make it a salad and this Iceberg Wedge Salad with Bacon offers all those things and more.
Wedge Salad History
The history of the Wedge Salad has been found to date back to 1916 in a book called “Salads, Sandwiches & Chafing Dish Recipes” by Marion Harris Neil. Iceberg lettuce was a very popular item in those days, most likely super cheap and a good canvas for adding flavours. With fewer ingredients to cook with in those days Marion’s recipe is simply Roquefort cheese and hard boiled eggs with a light dressing. In the decades to follow the wedge salad became a delightful and popular starter course to order when dining out.
The traditional classic wedge salad of the 1970s could be found in many steakhouses and would always be laden with blue cheese dressing, crispy bacon, and hard boiled egg all on top of an iceberg lettuce wedge.
In the last ten years the wedge salad has begun to make a comeback popping up on menus all over the country. Many recipes stick true to the traditional wedge salad ingredients, however at Bakersbeans we see no point in following tradition and as always love to put our own spin on recipes.
A wedge salad, like any bright green salad can be dressed up or dressed down however you choose. Adding beans, nuts, chopped vegetables or fruit, different cheese, salad dressings, even protein changes the game and gives you a new fresh salad every time you make it.
I’ve been playing with my food aka wedge salads for the past month. We decided this week will be wedge salad week in our house. One head of iceberg lettuce can make four meal sized wedge salads, therefore stay tuned for three more wedge salads this week!
Pro Tips:
- Leave the stem on, slice a thin piece off the bottom and eat around it. Keeping the stem on helps hold the wedge together.
- This recipe makes enough for one wedge. Double ingredients for more wedge salads.
- Sprinkle a little water on your leftover lettuce head and use plastic wrap pressed against the cut side of the lettuce head and wrapped around it to stop it from turning brown.
- If you do not like to cut into your salad, simply cut up the salad, toss everything currently on your plate and boom you have a regular plated salad.
This salad is a knife and forker and currently one of our favourites. Be sure to check out our other wedge salads: BLT Wedge Salad and Greek Wedge Salad.
What is your favourite salad?
