Hot Bacon Dressing

I drove to Grinnell Saturday. Roger was in the garden — the garden that is his whole world now, the 84-year-old man who tends six tomato plants and twelve sunflowers with the same care he once gave four hundred acres. He's slower but he's still Roger. He still watches the crop reports. He still calls Jack on Wednesdays.

Thursday was tater tot hotdish, because Thursday is always tater tot hotdish and the schedule doesn't change for anything — not pandemics, not loss, not the passage of years. The tater tots go in at 375 and come out golden and the family eats them and the eating is the Thursday and the Thursday is the structure and the structure holds. But I also made grilled chicken with garden vegetables earlier this week, because the kitchen doesn't only look backward. The kitchen grows.

Canning approaches. August. The ritual that marks the turn from growing to preserving, from garden to pantry, from the sun to the jar. The pressure canner — Marlene's mother's, weight jiggly, gauge lying, handle replaced twice — waiting in the closet like a veteran reporting for duty. The heirloom equipment for the heirloom work.

Roger’s tomatoes were just starting to come in — deep red, heavy on the vine, still warm from the afternoon sun — and I couldn’t let them sit. A BLT felt right in spirit, that same combination of bacon and garden tomato and something crisp, but I wanted it to feel a little more like the meal deserved the occasion. Hot bacon dressing does exactly that: it’s simple enough to honor the tomato, warm enough to feel like a Saturday in August, and it carries the kind of quiet permanence that Roger’s garden does — nothing fancy, just everything good.

Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 15 min | Total Time: 25 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

6 strips thick-cut bacon, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons reserved bacon drippings
2 tablespoons water
For serving: sliced garden tomatoes, torn romaine or butter lettuce, thinly sliced red onion

Instructions

Cook the bacon. In a skillet over medium heat, cook bacon pieces until crisp, about 8–10 minutes. Remove bacon with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. Reserve 2 tablespoons of the drippings in the pan.
Build the dressing. With the pan still over medium-low heat, whisk the apple cider vinegar, sugar, Dijon mustard, salt, pepper, and water into the reserved drippings. Stir continuously until the sugar dissolves and the dressing is warmed through, about 2–3 minutes. Do not boil.
Finish and combine. Remove from heat and stir the crisp bacon back into the warm dressing.
Dress and serve. Arrange sliced garden tomatoes and torn lettuce on a platter or individual plates. Pour the hot bacon dressing over the top immediately and serve while warm, so the lettuce just barely wilts at the edges.

Nutrition (per serving)

Hot Bacon Dressing — The Tomatoes Roger Grew Deserve This