Cranberry Clementine Arugula Salad
This Cranberry Clementine Arugula Salad also includes butter-toasted pecans, candied bacon, ruby-red pomegranate seeds and a delicious Honey-Cider Poppy Seed Dressing. It makes a beautiful side for a dinner party and a fabulous whole meal salad with rotisserie or grilled chicken, shrimp, steak...
If you've got some entertaining coming up or you just want to make life a little healthier and more delicious, I suggest that you shake up a batch of this Honey-Cider Poppy Seed Dressing and keep the ingredients for this beautiful Cranberry Clementine Arugula Salad on hand.
I love that this salad is so versatile and can be easy enough to throw together on a busy day. The Honey-Cider Dressing will take less than 5 minutes to put together and you can keep the salad super simple with just arugula, sliced clementines, dried cranberries and some thinly sliced red onion. Or you can make it quite fancy and over-the-top-delicious by including the pomegranate arils (seeds), butter-toasted and candied bacon.
Ingredients:
- ⅓ cup sweetened dried cranberries
- ½ cup boiling water
- 1 teaspoon butter
- ½ cup pecans
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
- 8 cups baby arugula, loosely packed
- 3 clementines, peeled, halved and sliced in ¼-inch slices
- half a small red onion, peeled and thinly sliced (optional)
- ⅓ cup pomegranate arils or seeds
- ¾ cup extra virgin olive oil
- ¼ cup honey
- ⅓ cup apple cider vinegar
- 1 teaspoon dried (ground) mustard
- 1 tablespoon poppy seeds
- 1 teaspoon garlic salt
- 1 pound thick-cut, smoky bacon
- ½ cup light or dark brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons coarse-grain mustard
- 2 tablespoon maple syrup
- 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper