Creamy Bacon Soup and Spinach Bacon Salad (Quick and Fun Dinner)

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Bacon lovers and Bendy fans, this dinner idea is both quick and fun, and can be Keto. Creamy bacon soup and spinach bacon salad for the ultimate soup and salad combo.

I decided NO RECIPE CARD because these are not my recipes. However, throwing these two recipes together into one dinner in 30 minutes took a doing. PLUS I have carb info, ingredient recommendations to get it healthier, amazing photos… And of course, links to the recipes.

I was on Pinterest and saw a photo from Flavor Mosaic of a bacon salad that looked so super yummy I couldn’t resist. I vowed, at that moment, that we were going to have that for dinner tonight. That night.

But then, somehow I ended up discovering that Joey Drew Studios has the official Bendy and the Ink Machine Bacon Soup Recipe in a download printable (plus they have lots of fun stuff on their site for fans). I decided it was going to be Soup and Salad for dinner.

So I linked to the recipes, but I have since noticed Joey Drew has taken down the fan printables link, and so for sake of please don’t make me search for hours for this recipe again, or worse, lose it all together as my Bendy fan kid loves it, I’m going to post a photo of it…

I’m also going to tell you how I rolled with it… Because it’s not quick unless you do it the way I do it.

And it’s not keto unless you get the right ingredients and kind of change up the soup, but once tweaked, you could potentially be looking at 8 net carbs per serving.

The salad recipe serves 4, and the soup seemingly serves 8. I figured carbs based on that.

The ingredients I used

I’m trying to be healthy, or healthier. Some of the ingredients I recommend, you could use a cheaper version, but I do some serious label reading at the store constantly recalculating preferences based on crap I read and hear about what’s healthy, so you can trust my ingredients are somewhat thought out.

Walmart’s my closest grocery store, and that’s why you see me use their website to create lists for recipes on this blog. But you can see my actual shopping lists for Bacon Soup and Bacon Salad.

Quick overview of Creamy Bacon Soup Ingredients

The recipe called for Canadian Bacon, which I think is some kind of achievement in the game. I used both Canadian Bacon and Black Label Hormel Bacon because Canadian Bacon was expensive. I’d have to buy 3 of those packs to get a pound. What I did was separate 1 lb of the Black Label bacon where 8 strips went toward the salad, and the rest went into the soup.

The Pacific Foods Organic Chicken Bone Broth, Unsalted 32oz was a decision I made after reading a bunch of labels. It seemed the healthiest. But you could save a few dollars by getting canned broth.

Instead of peeling and chopping potatoes like a naughty sailor, I opted for 2 cans of Diced Potatoes. That is a big deal on making this dinner quick.

Additionally, you can get diced mirepoix instead of chopping carrots, celery and onion.

As far as butter is concerned, I keep Smart Balance on hand, and that’s what I use. It had the better health options in my label reading.

Now if you want to KETOFY this recipe, you gonna have to change up the recipe a bit, and that includes substituting flour with 1/2 tsp of Xanthan gum and substituting potatoes with 2 frozen bags of cauliflower (or you could use fresh if you like chopping veggies). I’ll talk more specifically about carbs in a minute.

Quick overview of the spinach bacon salad ingredients

For this recipe, I pretty much grabbed the cheapest ingredients possible. I did choose to go Sugar Free Syrup (you could do sugar free honey) to reduce carbs.

But one big difference was my spinach option.

My Walmart has these bags of “Cooking with Spinach,” and one of their products is, “Power Greens.” And if you look at the nutritional value vs baby spinach, I mean this thing is packed with some vitamins. It’s rich in Potassium, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin K, iron, folate, magnesium and manganese.

Cost of Ingredients

So if I buy almost everything except salt and pepper, I’d be looking at the following totals…

• $23.94 Bacon Salad
• $29.97 Bacon Soup
• ___________________
• $53.91

Woah that’s a lot. But fortunately, most of those ingredients I had on hand. So what I would generally end up spending for these recipes are…

• $17.23 Bacon Salad
• $18.33 Bacon Soup
• ____________________
• $35.56

How I finagled creamy bacon soup and spinach bacon salad together

So to make this a QUICK DINNER, I had to kind of flip flop between the makings of things.

I will say this dinner was quick, but not lazy. I was in the kitchen for most of the cook time. It’s not a set and forget dinner like a good crockpot recipe.

Step 1 – Boil the Eggs

While the recipe recommended using an Insta Pot for boiling eggs, I went old fashioned stove top. I kind of felt like an idiot when it came time to peel the eggs. I haven’t boiled eggs in so long, I felt like a newb with this. I’m 40 something years old, and I forgot how to boil an egg righteous.

Lessons I learned.

• Don’t overcook the eggs. They expand too much and make it hard to peel.
• As soon as they are done, run them under cold water or ice bath and then peel.
• They are still cooking as they are cooling if you don’t cool them down fast enough.

So I’m going to let Love and Lemons (one of the prettiest food blogs ever) tell you how to boil an egg all perfect like. For one, she turns off the heat as soon as the water boils and lets them cook in that for about 10 minutes.

So bring it to a boil, and then turn off that heat.

Step 2 – While the eggs are cooking, get the bacon soup started

So I dumped the mirepoix and butter into a huge soup pot on medium high heat and let that cook while I separated the bacon (setting 8 strips to the side for the salad) and chopped up the soup bacon (remaining bacon + Canadian Bacon). Then I added the soup bacon to the soup pot.

Step 3 – Fry salad bacon in a skillet

So then I got a skillet going of the bacon for the salad. I couldn’t fit it all in one go, but as bacon shrunk and cooked, I would add more bacon until done.

Step 4 – Once eggs are done, move them to ice bath.

So I did something totally different and wrong. I ignored the eggs until the end, and then struggled ferociously to get the stupid egg shells off without losing half the egg with it.

So for everyone’s sake, it’s been about 10 minutes, so move the eggs over to ice cold water. I really would dump the hot water out, run cold water over it until the pot cools off, and then fill halfway with cold water, and add a bunch of ice.

Step 5 – Back to the soup

While the salad bacon was frying, once the soup bacon was done enough, I added the broth and potatoes (cauliflower if you’re on keto). Brought that sucker to a boil and then simmered. Flip flopping between that and the bacon.

At this point, the soup needs to simmer for 10 minutes

Step 6 – While simmering the soup, frying the bacon, and ice bathing the eggs, go ahead and get the salad in a bowl.

Like I personally wanted to plate a salad pretty for the photograph, but in real life, I’d plop the salad in a large salad bowl and toss it. So like the Power Greens, some of the onions (not the whole pack), and mushrooms. And I’d toss that around a bit.

Step 7 – Save the bacon grease for the dressing

Once the bacon is done, move the bacon to a dish and the bacon grease to a medium bowl. Use a bowl that can handle high heat.

Step 8 – Get the thickener going and add to soup

In the same skillet you just fried bacon in, put it back on the heat and melt the butter and add flour. If you are going for keto, instead of flour, use 1/2 teaspoon of Xanthan Gum.

Add this to the soup, stir, bring soup back to a boil and then back down to a simmer.

Step 9 – While waiting for the soup to boil, start on the dressing

In the bowl you put bacon grease in, add vinegar, garlic, mustard, syrup, salt and pepper. Mix.

Step 10 – Finish off the soup

Reduce the soup heat to low, add the cream, milk, cheddar, salt and pepper. Stir. Yummy.

Step 11 – Handle the eggs

Remove egg shells and slice them up.

Step 12 – Plate it up

So get 4 bowls, and fill with soup. Get 4 plates, and put down the salad, 2 strips of bacon, 3 eggs, and the dressing for each plate.

Keto Considerations

So the soup recipe as it is on Bendy’s website makes about 8 servings (maybe 6 if you like large servings, but I figured this to be 8 servings), so for that, each serving has about 14.5 net carbs.

However, if you replace flour with 1/2 tsp of Xanthan Gum, that will knock off 3 net carbs per serving.

And if you replace potatoes with cauliflower, that will knock off 5.25 net carbs per serving.

So by replacing those 2 ingredients, you’d be looking at about 5.38 net carbs per serving.

The salad recipe makes 4 servings, and using sugar free syrup or sugar free honey, has 10 net carbs total making it 2.5 net carbs per serving.

So if you follow the recipes as they are, for both the soup and salad, you’re looking at a dinner of 17 net carbs. Which, if you ask me, is not bad for even keto. But you can only have one small bowl of soup with that. If you replace those carbs to knock that dinner down to 7.88 or 8 net carbs, then you could have 2 bowls of soup making it about 13 net carbs.

This configures carbs based on the grocery list I have with Walmart.

Soups Carb Breakdown

• 58 net carbs for 2 cans of diced potatoes
• 4 net carbs for heavy whipping cream
• 3 net carbs for Canadian bacon
• 12 net carbs for 2% Milk
• 16 net carbs for shredded cheddar
• 23 net carbs for flour
• 8 net carbs for frozen cauliflower

Salad Carb Breakdown

• 4 net carbs for Power Greens
• 5 net carbs for mushrooms
• 1 net carb for minced garlic

Bendy Fandom

My youngest child has always been a fan of Bendy and the Ink Machine. At some point, we got said child a Bendy Plushie, and that guy is now part of the family with a unique personality all his own.

He really loved the bacon soup. Kept tying to sell it to us for 12 cents.

Recipe Reviews

Bacon soup and spinach bacon salad as a dinner was fuktastic delicious. One of the best ideas I ever had. Plus it was quick to make (took me about a half hour, but moving a lil full throttle with it), healthier than it sounds, and the kids wanted more salad than we had.

As far as the official Bendy and the Ink Machine bacon soup goes, it tasted like Bean Soup and Potato Soup had a baby.

And for the spinach bacon salad with hot bacon dressing, all the flavors combined so well, I don’t think I’d ever change the recipe to do something crazy like add tomato. But I will say it served well with Deviled Eggs. If I were to go salad no soup, I’d add deviled eggs as a side dish. This is definitely a Keto dish I want to remember.

The best part is combining these two recipes gave us a HEALTHY BACON DINNER. I never imagined healthy and bacon would ever go together like this. Truly a bacon lover’s must-have life experience. Bucket list dinner.

And the Bendy Soup is not only a great meal or snack for Bendy Fans, but also a good party dish for Bendy and the Ink Machine themed parties. You could almost double the recipe and put them in little mason jars and make Briar Label labels for a party favor.

Love this dinner idea? Please Pin.

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