This Grilled Chicken Salad is fresh, filling, and loaded with flavors, making it an easy yet satisfying choice for lunch or dinner any day.
A crisp, cool salad makes the perfect refreshing dish, and adding the grilled chicken to the top makes this into a filling Salad. For more favorite salad recipes, try my Beet Salad and Thai Beef Salad.
Why You’ll Love This Salad?
- Hearty grilled chicken makes this salad satisfying enough to count as a full meal.
- Use your leftover chicken or bacon to cut down the prep time!
Sabrina’s Grilled Chicken Salad Recipe
Salads get a bad rap for not being filling enough or not being very excited. With this Grilled Chicken Salad, that is about as far from the truth as you can get. This salad is jam packed full of protein, filling veggies, and topped with a zingy dressing. You will not feel hungry for a while after eating this! A fresh salad makes an amazing lunch to perk you up for the rest of the day or an easy dinner. It also makes great meal prep for your weekday lunches to take to work.
Recipe Card
Ingredients
Grilled Chicken Salad:
- 2 chicken breasts , boneless and skinless
- 6 cups romaine lettuce , coarsely chopped
- 1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt
- 1/4 teaspoon coarse ground black pepper
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 8 slices bacon , cooked and chopped
- 2 tomatoes , medium, cored and chopped
- 1 cup blue cheese , crumbled
- 1 avocado , peeled, pitted, and diced
- 1 cucumber , peeled and chopped
Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing:
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
- 1 tablespoon honey
- 1 teaspoon dijon mustard
- 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/4 teaspoon coarse ground black pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
Instructions
Bacon:
- Cook the bacon in a pan on medium heat for 10-12 minutes until it reaches your desired crispiness.
- Set aside and let it cool while you cook the chicken.
Grilled Chicken:
- Butterfly the chicken into 4 thin fillets.
- Season with salt and pepper.
- Add olive oil to a large deep skillet on medium-high heat.
- Cook on each side for 6-8 minutes until well browned, then remove from the pan.
- Slice into 1/2″ thick strips.
Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing:
- Add olive oil, balsamic vinegar, honey, dijon mustard, kosher salt, black pepper and oregano to a bowl.
- Whisk well until combined and serve immediately.
- Alternately add to a glass jar and shake to combine.
- Shake or whisk right before using.
Salad Assembly:
- Add the lettuce, chicken, bacon pieces, tomatoes, blue cheese, avocado, and cucumber.
- Add dressing and enjoy!
Nutrition
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Sabrina’s Tips
If you want to make the grilled chicken for your salad recipe extra flavorful, you can prep the meat in a simple chicken marinade before the cooking time. You can mix together a marinade with ingredients like balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, brown sugar, dijon mustard, and some spices. You can also add other flavoring ingredients, like lemon juice or red wine vinegar, according to your taste.
Table of contents
About this Recipe
Between the chicken, hard-boiled eggs, blue cheese, and bacon, this recipe is packed with protein and wonderfully filling. It only requires a small bit of chopping and cooking the chicken and bacon. You could even could even use leftover chicken or bacon you already have to make this and your prep time just went way down. Whisk together a delightful balsamic dressing to top this salad. It is the perfect mix of crunchy, creamy, savory, tangy, and fresh all at the same time. This is sure to be a new favorite salad that you add to your rotation.
Ingredients
- Chicken: You’ll want two boneless, skinless chicken breasts to make enough chicken to top off this recipe. You can easily season the chicken with salt and pepper, then grill the meat in olive oil for flavorful, tender grilled chicken pieces.
- Bacon Bits: The bacon makes a salty and crispy addition to your salad. You can use store-bought ready-cooked bacon bits or cook slices of bacon ahead of making the salad. After cooking the bacon until tender and crisp, let the slices cool, then crumble them into pieces to add to the salad recipe. Making your own bacon bits gives a much fresher flavor to the recipe.
- Lettuce: Romaine lettuce makes an easy, crispy salad base that you can layer the other vegetables on top of. Wash and dry the lettuce ahead of starting the recipe. Then cut the leaves into manageable, bite-sized pieces.
- Blue Cheese: This soft, crumbly cheese is perfect for topping off salads. Blue cheese has a sharp, salty flavor that stands out and contrasts with the fresh vegetable ingredients for an amazing combination.
- Tomatoes: Core and chop two medium tomatoes to add to the vegetables. Alternatively, you could use grape or cherry tomatoes.
- Avocado: Peel, pit, and dice one avocado to add to the top of the salad. Avocado makes an excellent healthy ingredient that adds a creamy texture and amazing flavor to the dish. I’d recommend slicing the avocado and adding it right before serving so that the pieces don’t go brown while you prepare everything else.
- Oil: Use olive oil as a base ingredient for a simple homemade salad dressing. It has a fairly simple flavor that vinegar and other ingredients can build off of. Because the oil naturally separates, you’ll want to whisk the dressing right before pouring it over the salad.
- Balsamic Vinegar: Mixing oil with vinegar makes an easy vinaigrette salad dressing. Balsamic vinegar has a complex, sweet flavor that tastes amazing.
Can this be made ahead of time?
To make your day especially easy, you can meal prep this Grilled Chicken Salad. You’ll want to cook the bacon, Grilled Chicken, and hard-boiled eggs in advance. You can also add all the balsamic vinaigrette ingredients to a mason jar so it’s easy to shake together. Then slice the vegetables, so they’re ready to go. You can keep the salad components in separate containers in your fridge, then toss them all together for the perfect salad and serve.
Pairing Suggestions
If you want a cafe-style soup and salad combo, you can serve the salad along with Creamy Potato Soup or Broccoli Cheddar Soup. Add some Texas Roadhouse Rolls and some Cinnamon Honey Butter to put this soup and salad combo over the top!
How to Store
- Serve: This salad is best enjoyed fresh and shouldn’t be left at room temperature for more than 2 hours.
- Store: If you aren’t sure you’ll finish the salad right away, keep the dressing on the side. That way, you can store leftover salad and dressing separately. You should also remove the avocado as it won’t keep well in the fridge. But the remaining salad ingredients can keep well covered in the fridge for up to 2 days. Then whisk the dressing together again and drizzle it over the leftover salad before serving.
- Freeze: You can freeze the grilled chicken for 3-4 months. Then let the chicken thaw in the fridge before tossing it in the salad mixture. But the fresh greens and other veggies won’t freeze well, so it’s better to chop fresh vegetables to serve with the defrosted chicken.
Ideas to Serve
Grilled Chicken Salad will taste amazing with a variety of dressings. This recipe includes instructions for a delicious balsamic vinaigrette, but if you want to change things up, you could make it with Ranch Dressing, Caesar, Blue Cheese, or honey mustard dressing.
Frequent Questions
Typically this chicken recipe takes 6-8 minutes of cooking time per side, though that varies slightly depending on the size of the chicken you’re using. You’ll need to cook until the outside is lightly browned and the meat is cooked through to the center. You can use an internal meat thermometer to check that the meat has cooked to 165 degrees to verify it’s done. Or, if you don’t have a thermometer, you can always do a small cut to the center of the meat to check it’s cooked.
Yes. If you prefer, you can absolutely make this salad recipe with boneless, skinless chicken thighs or chicken legs. Just keep in mind that dark meat has a slightly higher fat content and will take longer to cook.
Variations
- Mixed Greens: Instead of just using romaine lettuce, you can change up the salad base by adding a variety of mixed salad greens. You can combine Arugula, spinach, iceberg lettuce, and napa cabbage for a fun veggie mix.
- Vegetable Add-ins: There are plenty of other delicious veggies that you can layer over the salad greens. Fresh corn, kalamata olives, bell peppers, grated carrots, or sliced mushrooms all make a wonderful addition to this dish.
- Cheese: You can also add different kinds of cheese like goat cheese, parmesan, mozzarella, shredded cheddar, or Swiss cheese.
- Leftover chicken: Instead of cooking up fresh grilled chicken, you can use leftover chicken from your fridge. This is great if you already have grilled chicken prepared, but you could even change up the recipe slightly to use other kinds of chicken, like Oven Baked Chicken Breasts or Crispy Chicken Tenders. Simply slice the leftover chicken and layer it over the veggies for a delicious chicken salad.
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The marinade for the chicken is so bright and citrusy. It’s my new go-to healthy lunch for meal prepping during the week.
Oh good! Thank you for sharing and giving it a 5 star review.