Grated Broccoli Salad with carrots, apples, dried cranberries, walnuts, and warm maple bacon dressing.
This grated broccoli salad. What an explosion of flavor and texture (italics mine)! Salty, sweet, nutty, bacon fatty flavors all sitting in the same bowl, ready for the mass consumption.
Shaving the broccoli for this salad makes it go down super easily because you aren’t chewing forever on raw broccoli florets.
Pretty much the whole salad is grated for your chewing convenience, then tossed in a citrusy maple-y bacon dressing for your yumming pleasure. Carrots, apples, and broccoli, actual bacon, dried cranberries, and walnuts make for a real wish-granting factory.
I’m not going to lie, this salad requires some elbow grease. Grating the broccoli and apple is quite the arm workout. I used pre-grated carrots to save myself some time and effort, because: lazy. Other than the grating and bacon frying, assembling the salad takes no time at all.
I typically make broccoli salad with a creamy greek yogurt dressing, but because I already knew I was cooking bacon for the salad, I figured I’d use my bacon fat resource. And you guys, warm bacon dressing is just so good!
You’ll just have to trust me on the dressing recipe, as I combined the bacon drippings with lemon juice, maple syrup, and cinnamon. It may seem strange, but I assure you, the dang thing works like a little prayer.
There’s so much crunch and spunk to this salad, I can barely stand it! And it saves well! You’d think that the bacon fat dressing would do weird things to the salad after refrigeration, but it doesn’t – it stays nice and fresh for days on end (I was eating on mine for 5 days and it stayed crunchy)!
Plus the recipe feeds fifty billion people…as in 6 to 8 people. Super comfortably.
P.S. If you’re interested in dying Eater eggs the au natural way, check out my lil’ recipe for Natural Easter Egg Dye using Love Beets’s beet juice!
Catch ya on the flippity flip! <- Don’t elbow me.
Grated Broccoli Salad with Carrots, Apples, and Warm Bacon Vinaigrette
Ingredients
Grated Broccoli Salad:
- 4 strips thick cut bacon
- 2 cups crowns broccoli grated (7 )
- 3 cups shredded carrot
- 2 cups large honeycrisp apples peeled and grated* (4 )
- 1-1/4 cup raw walnuts chopped
- 1 cup dried cranberries
Warm Bacon Vinaigrette:
- ¼ cup warm bacon drippings
- ¼ cup lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon pure maple syrup
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon sea salt to taste
Instructions
- Cook the bacon over medium-high until crispy. Pour ¼ cup of the bacon fat into a measuring cup and reserve for the warm bacon dressing.
- Add the grated vegetables to a large mixing bowl along with the chopped walnuts and dried cranberries.
- Whisk together all of the ingredients for the dressing and pour over the salad. Toss everything together well and serve in abundance! Note: if the bacon fat has congealed by the time you make the dressing, you can zap it in the microwave for 20 to 30 seconds to get it to liquefy again.
Notes
Nutrition
More Broccoli Salad Recipes:
- Broccoli Salad with Blueberries and Honey-Toasted Walnuts
- Shaved Broccoli Salad with Apples and Bacon
This salad is so pretty and colorful! I like that you grated the broccoli so the pieces are small like the rest of the salad ingredients. The dressing sounds incredible!
This is a really beautiful salad! I’m sure as you mentioned, grating a broccoli may not be that fun and kinda awkward! Looks good though and I’ll give it a try!
You had me at maple bacon dressing…ughhhh. Enjoy your trip to Coloradoooo..I’ve never been, but it’s on my [very long] list of places to visit one day 🙂
Holy sweet, smoky, salty, and tangy dressing batman!!! I love a good clean out the fridge recipe! That grated broccoli is genius!!!
I love grated salads – it makes it so easy to get a perfect bite with everything!
Julia, just reading the ingredients for the dressing tells me it will be wonderful. Hope you have a wonderful time skiing.
Jerry, to me last night: Julia’s salad looks so good!
It appears that this will be on our menu at some point in the near future.
Waaaadehooooo!! It’s pretty tasty! Lots and lots of crunch and lots and lots of citrusy bacon-y flavah. I think you’d love 😀
Great looking salad, with bacon in it I have a chance of the kids trying it. Thanks
Oh what I would have given to have thought ahead and stowed myself away in your suitcase. Have SO MUCH FUN. And yay for clean-out-the-fridge salads…sometimes they bring the most inspiration!
Just made this and I have a labor-saving idea: I have a mezzaluna (which is a rocking blade-life knife). I used it to finely chop the broccoli.
Ah brilliant! Thanks so much for the idea, Susan! xo
I don’t really like lemon is there something that I could substitute besides the lemon or half lemon have something else? So much for this other than the lemon it was a really good!
Hi Veronica, I bet some fresh orange juice would be a good substitute if you’re looking for something with less bite. Or a small amount of white, cider, or balsamic vinegar instead of the lemon juice. Let me know if you play around the recipe and find a good replacement!
Thanks, Julia!
This looks great, Julia! Would you mind posting your recipe for Creamy Greek Yogurt Dressing that you mentioned in the post? I don’t eat bacon and would love the alternative!
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