Shopping tip: If you spy a lumpy bag of bacon ends in the market, buy it. Bacon ends are key to this salad, which essentially takes a classic BLT (bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich) and tosses it into a big salad bowl as a deconstructed version of itself. It’s not a vegetarian’s dream, admittedly, but for bacon lovers, it’s heavenly.
You can find bacon ends in vacuum-packed pouches in the deli and meat departments of your market. At first glance, the contents of the hefty packages, jammed with irregular hunks of bacon, are unidentifiable. They are not the neatly fanned bacon slices with which you are familiar. Bacon ends are just that—the hunks and ends of the meat that are trimmed and (gasp) discarded during production of those neatly arranged bacon strips. I am here to tell you that the chunks are revelatory. They are thick and meaty, with lots of pointy edges that will crisp to perfection when cooked….