Grandma’s Wilted Lettuce Recipe – Old Fashioned Wilted Lettuce

Grandma’s Wilted Lettuce Recipe is the perfect summer side dish to take you back to your childhood. Old Fashioned Wilted Lettuce has a hot bacon dressing made with bacon grease, vinegar and sugar.

Grandma’s Wilted Lettuce Recipe

If there’s one aroma that I associate with my Grandma during the summer months, it would be that of wilted lettuce. It’s the particular aroma that arises when the vinegar hits the hot pan, and the the tanginess combined with the sweetness of the sugar gets up in your nose. It actually almost burns my nose.

It’s at this very moment, every single time, that I think fondly of her.

I love her and miss her so much. It almost makes me a bit weepy as I’m standing over the stove stirring my wilted lettuce dressing. At least, I can blame it on the vinegar if anyone walks in and finds me crying.

Old Fashioned Wilted Lettuce

Just in case you didn’t grow up eating wilted lettuce like I did, let me explain.

Wilted Lettuce is an old fashioned dish, often considered German or Pennsylvania Dutch in origin. It consists of a hot dressing made quickly out of bacon grease, sugar and vinegar. The hot bacon dressing gets tossed over leaf lettuce where it lightly wilts down from the heat of the dressing.

Depending on how you were raised, Wilted Lettuce salad sometimes includes bacon chopped up in pieces and/or hard boiled eggs.

My Grandma was a purist. She rarely put the bacon bits in the salad; for her, I imagine, it was just a great use of bacon grease. She never, ever, ever wasted anything.

That’s what happens when your family loses its farm during the Great Depression. That’s something that you never get over, and frugal becomes your normal; at least this is what happened with my Grandma.

Wilted Lettuce Salad with Bacon

The dressing is the perfect melody of tangy from the vinegar and sweet from the sugar. And then, bacon drippings always packs a punch of flavor.

It should be noted that this salad must be eaten right away. As the lettuce sits in the hot bacon dressing, it continues to wilt and wilt and wilt to the point of no return.

Be sure to use only the amount of lettuce that you’ll eat at that meal.

Ingredient List for Grandma’s Wilted Lettuce

• Bacon Grease
• Bacon (optional)
• Sugar
• White Vinegar
• Head of Leaf Lettuce (washed and dried in a colander or salad spinner)

How to Make Wilted Lettuce with Bacon Grease

Step By Step Instructions

1. Chop up bacon into bite-sized pieces; fry in a large skillet until crispy. Remove bacon to a paper towel-lined plate, leaving the bacon grease in the pan.  (This step can be omitted if you are starting with reserved bacon grease. In that case, add bacon grease to the skillet, and heat over medium heat.)
2. Add sugar, and immediately whisk until the sugar is dissolved. Turn off heat.
3. Pour in white vinegar to the sugar mixture, stirring the entire time. Be careful, it will send up a flume of vinegar steam that gets in your nose.
4. Pour the warm dressing over chopped lettuce, toss it to lightly wilt.
5. Add in crumbled bacon pieces (optional), and eat immediately.

For the full ingredient amounts and recipe steps for Wilted Lettuce Salad with Bacon Grease, scroll to the recipe card at the bottom of this post. 

Recipe FAQs

• Fried bacon pieces are optional if you’d rather use reserved bacon grease from breakfast.  This is what my Grandma did.
• Start with approximately 4 Tablespoons bacon grease.
• Only use as much lettuce as you’ll eat in one meal; wilted lettuce does not save.  The lettuce gets too wilted and becomes inedible.
• Hard boiled eggs are a great addition to old fashioned wilted lettuce salad.  Or, sauté onions in the bacon grease for added flavor.
• I’ve seen this classic recipe with hard-boiled eggs added too.
• Try using leaf lettuce from the farmers’ market in the summer. It works perfectly for Grandma’s Wilted Lettuce with bacon.
• This recipe is super fast to make. Make it after all your other food is done cooking to ensure it is perfectly wilted, not soggy!
• Visit our Amazon Store for our favorite pantry and kitchen items.

Recipe Variations

• Use different lettuces such as romaine lettuce, iceberg lettuce or spinach.
• Add hard boiled eggs.
• Omit the bacon, using olive oil in place of the bacon drippings.
• Green onions are a delicious additions.
• Use apple cider vinegar instead of white vinegar.

Grandma’s Best Garden Recipes

Old Fashioned Stewed Tomatoes 

Grandma’s Rhubarb Pie

Easy Pan Fried Zucchini 

Old Fashioned Pickled Beets 

Simple Sour Cream Cucumbers 

Easy Salad Recipes

Salads are a great side dish, but we love when a few extra ingredients are added to make salads the main course. Here are some of our favorite easy salad recipes:

• Spinach Salad with Bacon and Hard Boiled Eggs
• Lehua Salad
• Lucious Lettuce Salad in a Jar
• French Dinner Salad with Cottage Cheese Dressing
• Broccoli Salad