Frisée Salad with Baguette Croutons

This Frisée Salad features frisée greens tossed in a red wine-mustard vinaigrette, topped with poached eggs, bacon, and crispy croutons. Makes a perfect lunch!  

This traditional French salad is perfect for early spring, because it really just requires some good hardy greens, like a head of frisée lettuce. Add a mustardy vinaigrette, bacon, a poached egg, and baguette croutons toasted in bacon fat, and you’ve got a winner that you’ll want to make year-round. 

Why Make This Recipe

• Classy and Elegant: This salad is truly stunning, and would be fantastic as part of a brunch spread or a special occasion lunch. 
• Easy to Make: Once you get the hang of poaching eggs, you’ll want to make them all the time. And the rest of this salad is super easy! 
• Great Flavor Combination: Bacon and eggs are, of course, fantastic together. But the combination of those with the mustardy salad dressing, slightly bitter greens, and crispy baguette croutons just puts this dish over the top. 

🥗 Ingredients

• Shallots: I love to use shallots in my salad dressings, as they are more mild than a yellow or red onion. But, you could substitute an onion instead—a sweet onion or red onion is probably your best choice. And make sure to chop them finely, as their flavor is stronger than shallots.
• Olive Oil: For salad dressings, I love to use a high-quality olive oil. You can really taste the difference in the final dressing. Look for cold-pressed if you can find it!
• Baguette: You can make this recipe with any kind of crusty bread. And, this recipe works great for day-old bread, so don’t throw out a loaf that is not fresh enough to eat. 
• Frisée Lettuce: Frisée is a member of the chicory family (like endive and escarole), and has a light peppery flavor. It is sometimes called curly endive. Frisée has a lacy texture that combines nicely with other greens, and is great in sandwiches too. Its texture really stands up to this salad, but if you can’t find frisée, look for other hardy greens such as escarole, red radicchio, or endive.

🥣 Instructions

First, prepare the vinaigrette by whisking together 1 tablespoon of chopped shallots, 2 teaspoons of Dijon mustard, and 1.5 tablespoons of red wine vinegar in a small bowl. Then drizzle in 4.5 tablespoons of olive oil, whisking constantly, until the dressing comes together. Season to taste with salt and pepper. 

If you are using bacon slices, stack together and cut into ¼-inch slices. Then sauté bacon slices or lardons in a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat, until crispy, 8-10 minutes.

Remove bacon from pan and set aside on a paper towel-lined plate. Add baguette cubes to the pan, turning the heat down slightly. Sauté until croutons are golden brown, about 5 minutes, stirring frequently.

Season baguette cubes with salt and pepper to taste. To prepare the salad, rinse frisée lettuce and pat dry. Toss lettuce with half of the vinaigrette, then divide among four plates.

Bring a large saucepan or deep skillet of water to a simmer. Crack each egg into a small bowl by itself, then hold each bowl just over the simmering water and tip the egg in. Stir the water a bit with a spoon to make sure the eggs aren’t sticking to the bottom of the pan. Cook for 3–4 minutes, depending on how runny you like your poached eggs.

Then remove with a slotted spoon and place either directly on each salad plate, or, on a paper towel-lined plate so you can remove some of the moisture before adding to your salad. Top each plate with crispy bacon and croutons. Serve with remaining vinaigrette drizzled on top. 

🧐 Recipe FAQs

👩‍🍳 Expert Tips

If you are nervous about poaching eggs, I have some tips that might help you. Remember that poached eggs are a rustic dish, so if your eggs end up with lots of wispy whites around them, it’s really ok! Some people recommend adding a teaspoon of vinegar to the boiling water, which does help to keep the egg whites together a little better (and doesn’t make them taste like vinegar!).

Also, creating a vortex in the water by stirring it before you add the egg does also help keep the egg together—but, it is difficult to do this when you are poaching multiple eggs at once. If you’re just poaching one, definitely try it! Deeper pots are also generally better to use than shallow pans, but again, it can be difficult to find a wide, deep pan for poaching multiple eggs (and that’s a ton of water used). Finally, poached eggs work best with the freshest eggs possible since the white tends to become more liquidy as the egg ages.  

You can decide how runny you want the yolk of your poached egg. I like a 3-minute poach, because the yolk is nice and runny. As you cut into it, the yolk mixes in with the vinaigrette, which then coats every bite of your salad. But you are certainly welcome to poach your egg for longer (around 4 minutes) if you like a thicker yolk! 

Be careful that you dry your frisée quite well after rinsing it, as water tends to hide in its frizzy leaves. Using a salad spinner for this is a great idea! Tear greens into bite-sized pieces by hand so as to not crush them. Also, note that if frisee is too bitter for you on its own, you can pair this with some milder greens as well. 

Finally, watch the heat on your bacon fat while making the croutons. After cooking the bacon, the fat may be so hot that it starts to burn the croutons rather than turning them golden brown. Reduce heat if necessary. And, if your bacon has not given up a lot of fat, you can add olive oil or butter to toast your bread cubes. 

Other France-Inspired Recipes

If you enjoyed this Frisée Salad, you might enjoy some of my other French recipes like:

• Quiche Florentine
• Easy Sole Meuniere
• Vin Chaud
• Green Beans Almondine
• French Lentil Soup
• Braised Leeks with Crispy Bacon
• Hachis Parmentier

French salads are some of my favorite recipes. Try this Asparagus and Eggs Salad next. Or this Salade de Tomates or Fig Goat Cheese Salad. All delicious!

If you try this recipe, I would love to hear from you! Leave a comment below—I read them all, and your feedback is invaluable to me. And please follow along on Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook or subscribe to my newsletter. I'd love to inspire you with more delicious, healthy, and seasonal recipes!

Instagram Users: Now that you've made this Frisée Salad recipe, tag me @vanillabeancuisine or #vanillabeancuisine because I'd love to see your results!