Wedge Salad with Carrot Bacon and Blue Cheese Vinaigrette

Makes: 4 servings

Totally Carbohydrates: 4 grams per serving

Hands-on Time: 25 minutes

Total Time: 50 minutes

This is basically your favorite steakhouse salad (okay, I’ve never actually been to a steakhouse, so I’m just imagining here…) but lightened up with a fantastic vinaigrette-style dressing and some smoky vegetable-forward crunch. Full disclosure: the carrot bacon is VERY FUSSY to make, so if you don’t like a weird project, please skip it altogether or just use regular bacon. But I DO like a weird project, and I love that there’s some extra nutrition and also that I can serve this to my vegetarian daughter. One last note (sorry): Swap Romaine lettuce for the iceberg if you want to make this even more nutrient-dense.

If you’re looking to:

Lower the carbs: Use regular bacon.

Lower the fat: Skip the blue cheese.

Lower the salt: Use reduced-sodium soy sauce in the carrot bacon; reduce the salt in the dressing.

Ingredients

For the carrot bacon:

1 large carrot

1 ½ tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 teaspoons tomato paste

2 teaspoons liquid smoke

A couple shakes of garlic powder

Black pepper (to taste)

For the dressing:

½ teaspoon kosher salt (or ¼ teaspoon table salt)

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

¼ cup olive oil

½ cup crumbled blue cheese

Black pepper (to taste)

For the salad base:

1 small head of iceberg lettuce, quartered

Instructions

1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Peel the carrot first, then use the peeler to shave it into wide ribbons. (Eventually you won’t be able to shave any more without shaving off your fingertips, at which point you can just eat the remaining carrot).

2. Mix the rest of the carrot-bacon ingredients together in a bowl. Add the carrots, toss well, and let them sit for five or so minutes. They should begin to soften and give up some liquid. 

3. Lay the carrots in a single layer on the baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes. Flip the carrots over and bake for another five minutes. Then turn the heat down to 300 and bake for five to 10 minutes more – until they’re browning and crisping, but not burning. This is a fine line, so check them frequently! Remove them from the oven. They’ll crisp up more as they cool.

4. In a small bowl, mug, or jar, stir together all of the dressing ingredients.

5. Arrange the lettuce wedges on a platter, spoon the dressing over the top along with the carrot bacon, slivered up. Serve right away.