Autumn Chopped Salad - Iowa Girl Eats (2024)

This post may contain affiliate links.

Got room for one more fall recipe?

Say hello to my little giant friend, the Autumn Chopped Salad!

Chopped salads are big, entree-sized salads where all the ingredients have been, you guessed it, chopped into bite-sized pieces, then tossed with dressing until every morsel is uniformly coated and ready to be shoveled into your face. I mean, eaten. Delicately, eaten.

Autumn Chopped Salad is a chopped salad that contains all the ingredients that make autumn wonderful, including sweet pears, crisp apples, crunchy roasted peanuts, chewy dried cranberries, and bacon. I suppose bacon isn’t inherently autumnal (love that word,) but hello, it’s bacon. Do we need an excuse to throw it into a salad? The answer is no. No. We. Don’t!

You may have seen the recipe for Autumn Chopped Salad from the doll that is Madison of Espresso & Cream floating around Pinterest for the past couple of years – and for good reason. The toppings-to-lettuce ratio is off the charts (a MUST for any entree-sized salad,) and the combo of sweet and salty is so satisfying. Plus, I repeat, there’s bacon. You will love this quick and filling salad recipe!

Start the Autumn Chopped Salad by adding 6 cups chopped romaine lettuce in a big bowl. A VERY BIG BOWL. The biggest one you’ve got!

Then microwave 3 slices center-cut bacon until crisp. Here’s my muss/fuss-free way to microwave bacon with perfect results every time:

Lay bacon strips on a folded paper towel on a microwave-safe plate, then cover with another folded paper towel. Microwave for 1 minute then rotate the plate 1/4 turn and microwave for 30 more seconds. Continue rotating and cooking in 30 second increments until the bacon is nice and crisp, about 2-3 minutes, then let it cool and chop it up. Done!

While the bacon’s cooling, start chopping the rest of the autumnal (there’s that word again!) toppings for the salad, including 1 pear. Whatever variety is your fave – bartlett, bosch, asian, etc. – is perfect.

Next chop up 1 apple. This here is an organic Pink Lady. A juicy Honeycrisp would be the ULTIMATE, but they’re still $3.99/lb around herewhich I’m not desperate enough to pay…yet.

To the lettuce, pear, and apple, add 1/4 cup each dried cranberries, chopped peanuts, and crumbled feta cheese.

Toss in the slightly cooled bacon, then it’s time to get dressed!

Madison recommends dressing the salad in a mixture of poppy seed salad dressing and balsamic vinaigrette, which I thought was brilliant – I always forget about PSD! I didn’t have any balsamic vinaigrette in the house, so I just threw a shot of balsamic vinegar into the mix, and it turned out awesome.

Give the salad a thorough toss to coat every bite in the dressing mixture (this is where having a BIG bowl comes in handy!) then divide between 2 big plates and shovel enjoy. :)

A feast for the eyes, and the stomach! Ben and I licked our bowls clean when I made this for dinner the other night, although we both had different ways of getting there…

Ben eats all his toppings first then uses the lettuce to “fill in the cracks”, while I prefer to eat all the lettuce first and save all the yummy toppings for “dessert”. To each their own, I suppose. Either way, enjoy!

Free Email Series

Dinner Made EASY

5 days of simple yet flavorful recipes that take the stress out of dinnertime!