Broccoli Bacon Salad

I've always loved salad. Even as a kid, I was thrilled to have a big old pile of lettuce with carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers and ranch dressing. As I got older, I began to branch out and add additional things to my salad and change up the type of dressing I used.

Broccoli was never a big part of salad for me. As a vegetable, it's just okay. I don't really like or dislike broccoli. But then there was this salad that changed everything.

Seriously, I'm not joking. I made this salad on Easter because I wanted a lighter dish to go along with the ham and potatoes au gratin. I think I've mentioned before that when I host holidays and serve some type of green salad for dinner, my family tends to pass it up. Guess what?! They ate this!

I'm now convinced this broccoli and bacon salad contains some sort of magical properties, because not only did I eat it on Easter, I finished off the leftovers throughout the week.

Broccoli Bacon Salad
Source: Recipes for Our Daily Bread
Servings: 8
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Ingredients:

• ⅔ cup mayonnaise
• 2 ½ tbsp. honey
• 1 tsp. fresh lemon juice 
• 1 tsp. pepper
• ½ tsp. kosher salt 
• 8 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
• 2 large bunches broccoli, florets chopped
• ½ cup matchstick carrots
• ½ cup Craisins
• ⅓ cup red onion, finely diced

Directions:
1. Add the mayonnaise, honey, lemon juice, pepper and salt to a bowl. Stir together until fully combined. (I made this in advance and transferred to a mason jar to keep in the fridge.)
2. In a large bowl, toss together the broccoli, carrots and red onion. Stir in the chopped bacon and Craisins.
3. Pour half of the dressing over the mixture and stir to fully coat everything. Refrigerate until ready to serve. Serve with remaining dressing on the side.

I put all of the salad ingredients in a large bowl the day before and refrigerated it. I wanted to dressing to soak into the broccoli without it getting mushy so I poured it over the salad 2 hours before serving.

I plan on making this again soon to take for lunch!