Adding chicken to your salad can easily promote that bowl of veggies from side dish status to the main event for a tasty lunch or a satisfying dinner. Here, we've gathered a choice array of salad recipes with chicken, whether you want to simply repurpose last night's roasted chicken leftovers, as in Sugar Snap Pea Salad, or start anew to build some serious flavor, like in the marinated Lebanese Chicken Salad. Take your pick of these 15 ways to keep salad with chicken flavorful and enticing.
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Peppery Greens Salad with Avocado, Chicken, and Tortilla Croutons
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Crispy, pimentón-dusted tortillas stand in for the flatbread traditionally found in the Lebanese bread salad fattoush. Make this recipe with easy homemade Tex-Mex Tortillas or use your favorite store-bought version.
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Sugar Snap Pea Salad
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Sweet sugar snap peas give this light summer salad from chef Ivan Conill’s Branch Line in Boston a satisfying crunch, while whole-milk ricotta adds heft with its mild, creamy richness. Shredded rotisserie chicken may be omitted for a vegetarian version, or you can substitute with flaked hot smoked salmon.
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Rice Noodle Salad Bowls with Grilled Lemongrass Chicken
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Like rice paper rolls and banh mi sandwiches, rice-noodle salad bowls — often categorized at restaurants as rice vermicelli bowls or bun — can feature many wonderful things, such as the grilled lemongrass chicken skewers in this recipe.
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Smoky Paprika Chicken and Crispy Chickpeas Over Escarole Salad
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The contrast between cool, lemony greens, warm spice-rubbed chicken, and crispy oven-baked chickpeas makes this main-course salad especially satisfying. Any sturdy salad green would be delicious here, from crunchy romaine to torn spinach leaves and thinly sliced cabbage.
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Green Goddess Chicken Salad
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Green goddess dressing — a mix of mayonnaise, sour cream, herbs, anchovies, and lemon — was created at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco in the 1920s, as a tribute to an actor starring in a play called The Green Goddess. The creamy dressing is typically tossed with a green salad, but it's also delicious in this chicken salad, made with a rotisserie bird.
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Ginger-Miso Grilled Chicken Slaw
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Store-bought shredded coleslaw mix makes this salad incredibly easy to prepare.
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Goi Ga (Crunchy Vietnamese Chicken Salad)
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To save time, use store-bought rotisserie chicken and skip the scallion oil; the salad already gets plenty of flavor from the spicy, vinegary dressing and abundance of fresh herbs.
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Chicken Salad with Zucchini, Lemon, and Pine Nuts
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Chef Armand Arnal uses ingredients from his restaurant's enormous organic garden to create seasonal Provençal dishes like this salad of chicken tossed with pine nuts and lemon-marinated zucchini.
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Cobb Salad with Roasted Sweet Onion Dressing
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Everything you love about a Cobb salad is taken to the next level with a roasted garlic and onion vinaigrette. Chef Sean Doty roasts sweet Vidalia onion and garlic until they are lightly charred, then purees them to make the apple cider vinaigrette that gives this Cobb salad its tang and depth of flavor.
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Chicken Caprese Salad
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Bocconcini (mini mozzarella balls) are often sold floating in herbed olive oil. That tasty oil is essential to this three-ingredient recipe because it adds so much flavor to both the chicken marinade and the dressing.
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Chicken Salad with Cucumber, Red Pepper, and Honey-Mustard Dressing
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Starting with cooked chicken — leftovers, perhaps, or a store-bought rotisserie chicken — keeps the preparation time short. If you want just chicken salad with no greens, skip the lettuce; double the chicken, cucumber, bell pepper, onion, and tarragon; and toss them with the dressing.
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Spinach Salad with Smoked Chicken, Apple, Walnuts, and Bacon
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Celebrate autumn's apple season with this delicious and satiating salad. We call for the thick-sliced smoked chicken available in the meat department of supermarkets. Of course, you can always use smoked turkey from the deli counter instead. If you like a more pronounced sweet-and-sour flavor, use another teaspoon of vinegar.
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Grilled Chicken Thigh and Cucumber Salad
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Chef Michael Symon likes to use deeply flavored chicken thighs for this crisp summer salad. A simple vinaigrette ties it all together.
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Lebanese Chicken Salad
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Don't be put off by the long ingredient list here. All are available at supermarkets, and the salad is easy to assemble. For maximum flavor, make sure to allow at least four hours for the chicken to marinate.
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Sesame Chicken Salad with Ginger-Lime Dressing
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Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten prepares a version of this salad with raw bluefin tuna, drizzling it with a dressing brightened by ginger-lime syrup at Jean Georges, his flagship restaurant in Manhattan. Here he replaces the fish with chicken breasts crusted with sesame seeds, pan-roasting them until golden and juicy.
