The Best Chopped Chicken Salad Recipe
During the height of produce season, we often find ourselves with more produce on our hands than we know what to do with. This is when the chopped salad enters the kitchen. You can chop everything up, throw it in a bowl, and whip up a delicious dressing to excellent effect. We think this is a salad worthy of main dish status, but if you’re making it for guests, serve it with some Grilled Corn and our Braised Tomatoes with Burrata for a perfect summer dinner!
What Does A Chopped Salad Contain?
A chopped salad is a style, a way of life, if you will. A chopped salad can contain anything your heart desires from a salad, but chopped up into bite-sized pieces. This makes life easier and salads more enjoyable. After the salad components are chopped, a salad dressing is applied and everything is mixed together. Chopped salads are also notoriously good at holding a salad dressing, so this is your chance to go wild with flavors.
Chicken Chopped Salad Ingredients
Grilled boneless skinless chicken breast.
Romaine lettuce – Perhaps the crunchiest of lettuces, we love this for the texture it adds to this salad, and others like our Greek Grilled Chicken with Salad and Grilled Romaine Caesar.
Veggies – Snap peas and chopped cucumber.
Fresh herbs – Chives, dill, and parsley.
Chèvre – A creamy, dreamy French-style goat cheese that we love for salads, like our Blackberry Goat Cheese Salad.
How to Make Chopped Chicken Salad
Season + Grill Chicken. Season with olive oil, salt, garlic powder, and onion powder. Grill until the internal temperature reaches 165°F on an instant-read thermometer. Let cool, and then dice.
Make the dressing in a jar. Combine the buttermilk, mayonnaise, yogurt, chèvre, parsley, onion powder, garlic powder, dill, and salt in a wide-mouth Mason jar. Whisk (or shake!) until smooth.
Chop herbs + veggies. This recipe is best served with a good sharp knife, because you’ll be getting your chop on for this salad.
Mix it up! Get your favorite salad bowl and combine the lettuce, snap peas, cucumber, chives, dill, and parsley. Add the dressing and toss until coated. Top with chicken, crumbled chèvre, pepper, dill, and chives to taste. Serve.
How to Store Chopped Salad +Tips
Composed chopped salad is best eaten the next day (or *maybe* two days), but if you keep everything separate, you can have the individual components ready to use for other recipes throughout the week. We don’t recommend freezing anything but the grilled chicken.
Make the chicken ahead! You could grill a couple of pounds of chicken to have some on hand for this recipe and others like our Santa Fe Grilled Chicken Sandwich.
Double the dressing and drizzle on everything throughout the week. You won’t regret it.
Can I sub the mayonnaise in the dressing? It doesn’t call for much, but you can always use more yogurt instead. The resulting flavor will be a slightly tangier dressing.
Let’s Chop It Up
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