Holiday Wild Rice Salad

Please note that most of the quantities of the salad ingredients can be adjusted as desired.

For the maple mustard dressing:
Place all dressing ingredients in a small bowl and use an immersion blender to blend until smooth and emulsified. If you don’t have an immersion blender, place all dressing ingredients in a jar or container with a tight fitting lid and shake until emulsified. Just know that the dressing will not be as smooth.

For the salad:
First, cook the wild rice. Heat a medium to large sauce pan over high heat. Add chicken broth and bring to a boil. Stir in wild rice and salt. Turn heat down to low/medium-low, cover, and simmer until wild rice is split open and curled. This should take right around 1 hour. If you see a good amount of wild rice still not split open, simmer for another 15 minutes. Remove from heat and drain any excess liquid. Fluff with a fork and set aside.

Fry bacon in a skillet over medium heat, until chewy-crisp. Remove bacon from skillet and drain on a paper-towel-lined plate. Once cool, chop into bite-sized pieces.

Place apple slices in a bowl and squeeze some lemon juice over them. Toss a few times to coat. This will help them to not brown as quickly.

To assemble the salad, place a layer of greens on the bottom of selected platter. Then arrange the rest of the ingredients as desired. Serve with maple mustard dressing on the side.

Note: The ingredient possibilities are nearly endless for a salad like this. If you don’t like pecans, use pistachios, walnuts, or almonds. Pears would be lovely instead of the apples. Goat cheese would be nice if blue cheese isn’t your thing. And prosciutto would be a good substitute for the bacon.