Big, Quick Chicken Salad (2024)

Here’s a big, speedy chicken salad to serve as a main course.Quick to puttogether using a store bought rotisserie chicken, all my favourite vegetables, a sprinkle of bacon, all tossed in a herby garlicky salad dressing.

Make this for dinner tonight, work tomorrow, or a leisurely weekend lunch with friends!

Quick Chicken Salad

If you’ve got the time, or are wanting to impress with an entirely “from scratch” main course size salad, I’d point you in the direction of one of these:

• San Fran Chicken Salad – my best, most impressive chicken salad. With Yogurt Ranch Dressing, snow pea shoots, fennel, pickled red onion and orange, it’s a copycat of a popular dish at Souvla, a trendy bistro in San Francisco;

• Mexican Chicken Salad – my second most involved chicken salad. Big Mexican flavours in a giant salad with marinated chicken, pico de Gallo and creamy avocado!

• Lemon Chicken Salad – beautiful bright lemon flavours, the lemon dressing does double duty as a chicken marinade and dressing;

• Celebration Salmon Salad – the smoked salmon version of the San Fran Salad, a giant salad made for special occasions; and

• Sweet Potato Salad – a big, juicy meat free salad that I make even when there’s no vegetarians present!

This chicken salad is for all the other times when there’s a need for speed. Bright and colourful enough to proudly serve to friends at a leisurely Sunday lunch. Substantial enough for dinner tonight. Delicious enough to make your coworkers jealous during lunch break tomorrow!

What you need

Here’s what I put in this chicken salad. It follows my basic formula for main course salads:

• something meaty* – chicken;

• something leafy – cos/romaine;

• something juicy – tomato;

• something crunchy – cucumber;

• something sweet – corn;

• something sharp/tangy – onion;

• a treat – bacon!

• dressing – I’m using a herby garlic one for this dressing. It’s a speedy dressing that packs a good flavour punch from the herbs but doesn’t require the effort to finely chop fresh herbs (though you absolutely can – and my favourite combos are listed in the recipe)

* Something “meaty” doesn’t necessarily mean meat. It can be roasted sweet potato, chickpeas, lentils – just something to fill you up and keep you full!

The chicken

Given this is a speedy recipe, it’s made with a store bought rotisserie chicken. If you want to make your own, either poach it, bake it, roast it, brine it or even slow cook it!

I have a container in the freeze in which I accumulate bits of leftover chicken that I use for things like this salad (quesadilla is another common use for leftover chicken bits).

How to make thisspeedy chicken salad

It probably comes off as a bit condescending to show you these steps, being that this is quite a basic recipe! It’s more out of habit given that I show steps for every recipe I do. 🙂

I did say this was a BIG chicken salad… it is very, very big! It will make a filling meal for 4 normal people, 3 with very very big appetites, or 6 people who are pretending to diet.

How long it keeps, how to serve it etc

Once dressed, the leafy greens will start to get a bit soggy after around 30 minutes due to the oil in the dressing. So if you’re making ahead, keep the dressing separate and cut the avocado just before serving (see the video at 40 seconds to see a speedy way to cut avocado chunks that you can totally do in your office at your desk!).

If you’re transporting half an avocado to work, just drizzle the cut face with lemon juice and tuck it into your salad lunch box, or put it in an airtight container with half an onion (the acid in the onion stops the avocado from going brown).

As for serving it, I think you’ll find this is substantial enough as it is to have as a main course. But of course, if you want to fill it out, nobody’s going to say no to some freshly made crusty bread, right?? 😇 (Don’t be the last person around here to try that bread recipe!!)– Nagi x

Watch how to make it

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