With bacon, Cheddar and a tangy dressing, this easy broccoli salad disappeared fast.
Reviewed by Dietitian Jane Leverich, M.S., RDN
Key Points
- This loaded broccoli salad is ready in just 25 minutes.
- Bacon, Cheddar and sour cream make raw broccoli a crowd-pleaser.
- The make-ahead-friendly dish holds up well for potlucks and cookouts.
With a breadth of options to choose from, potlucks are a dream for people like me who love variety on their plate. Offering a little bit of this and a little bit of that, the buffet line is my oyster.
While the freedom to be indecisive at the potluck or cookout can be its greatest appeal, the same allure does not always translate to prepping for the event in the kitchen. Should I bring pasta salad or potato salad—with or without mayo? What if someone’s already bringing mac and cheese?
These are all questions I needed to resolve on the eve of a friend’s party—a potluck in the park to celebrate their birthday. I had some requirements for my dish: easy, delicious, make-ahead-friendly and different enough to avoid duplicates.
With those parameters in mind, I took to my MyRecipes account to browse some quick and easy salad recipes. Luckily, it didn’t take long to stumble upon the winner—our Loaded Broccoli Salad, which happens to be EatingWell‘s most-saved summer cookout recipe.
How To Make It
The recipe begins with its most difficult step (which isn’t actually all that difficult): cooking the bacon. I laid three strips in a cold pan—a method that helps minimize splatter and promotes an even cook—and let them rise to a medium heat until crispy, which took about 5 minutes. Then I reserved 1 tablespoon of bacon fat and set the strips aside to cool.
Since I was preparing this salad the night before the party, I combined the ingredients for my dressing in a separate bowl. If you’re enjoying it right away, feel free to mix the dressing in the bottom of the serving bowl to cut down on dishes.
To make the super-simple dressing, I whisked together ¼ cup of sour cream, ¼ cup of mayonnaise, 4 teaspoons of rice vinegar, ¼ teaspoon of pepper and the reserved bacon grease.
After safely stowing my dressing in the fridge, I took out my cutting board and prepared the base of the salad.
I chopped a medium head of broccoli into florets, transferred the florets to a bowl and sprinkled in sliced scallions. Then I coarsely chopped and added the cooled bacon. A half-cup of shredded Cheddar cheese (or as much as your heart desires) completes the base.
Why I Love It
The next day, my bowl of salad and my to-go container of dressing made their way to the park to a warm reception. The raw broccoli stayed crunchy, cutting through the creamy dressing perfectly, and it didn’t hurt to know I was getting a healthy serving of fiber, antioxidants and vitamins onto everyone’s plate. Plus, if you’re expecting some selective eaters at the party, the loaded toppings make the veggie an easy sell.
Ready in just 25 minutes, this dish was the perfect quick and easy option I needed to make up for my procrastination. The freshness of the broccoli combined with the classic, crowd-pleasing flavors of the bacon, cheese and sour cream provided the uniqueness factor I was looking for.
I found the tangy dressing to be the perfect accompaniment to the grilled meats on my plate, and my fellow partygoers seemed to agree—by the time the party was over, my bowl was scraped clean.
No wonder this recipe is our most-saved cookout recipe on MyRecipeswith more than 36,000 saves. If you want to give it a try next time you’re looking for a crowd-pleasing cookout dish, make sure to click the heart to add it to your own MyRecipes collection.
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