Strawberry Apple Chicken Salad
A quick and tasty Strawberry Apple Chicken Salad, filled with plump juicy strawberries, sweet apple slices, crunchy almonds and topped off with the most wonderful poppy seed dressing you’ve ever tasted!
You guys, I have a serious salad addiction! And I seriously cannot get enough of this knock-your-socks off bowl of everything summer. No worries if you’re not as big of a salad fan as I am, you could totally use about half the spinach and turn this whole Strawberry Apple Chicken Salad recipe into Strawberry Apple Chicken Wraps. Genius, right? 🙂
Oh and the dressing, people, the dressing. I don’t always whip up my own dressing, but this easy poppyseed dressing is totally worth the extra 5 minutes. Creamy, tangy, sweet, and whatever other fantastic adjective you can think up when you describe delicious!
Annnnnd, can I just get a hooray for quick and healthy dinners? After a long day of work, stress, chaos and life’s little uh-ohs, an easy and delicious dinner is what I need. Something I know that will turn out tasty with minimal effort. This is it, friends! The dinner you want to make at the end of a long hard day. So flavorful, nutritious and ready to eat in fifteen minutes- you can’t beat that!
Feel free to play around with the ingredients in this Strawberry Apple Chicken Salad to really make it your own. I know slices or chunks of avocado would be awesome in this salad and if you’re vegetarian, just simply leave out the chicken. You could totally add quinoa, chickpeas or even bowtie pasta to the mix. And if you’re not vegetarian, wouldn’t crumbled bacon be divine? As for the nice crunch, I used Blue Diamond Honey Roasted Almonds (my favorite). But Blue Diamond has such a wide variety of almond flavors, go ahead and get crazy. I’ll be topping this salad with Toasted Coconut Almonds, next.
Strawberry Apple Chicken Salad
Ingredients
- 3 boneless skinless cooked chicken breasts, about 3 cups, chopped (I buy these from either Costco or Trader Joe's, you could also use rotisserie chicken)
- 6-8 cups baby spinach or baby kale/baby spinach mix
- 1 apple, thinly sliced (any yellow-red apple will do great, I used gala)
- 1½ cups quartered strawberries
- ¼ cup chopped Blue Diamond Almonds, any variety works, I used Honey Roasted
- salt and pepper to taste
For the dressing:
- ⅔ cup mayo*
- ½ cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk, any milk product will work
- 5 tablespoons Lite&Sweet, xylosweet, baking splenda, Stevia or sugar
- 7 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil, or other oil
- 4 teaspoons poppy seeds
Instructions
- First prepare the dressing by blending all salad ingredients together (except for poppy seeds) until smooth. Stir in poppy seeds. Cover and chill until ready to use.
- In a large bowl toss together chicken, spinach, apple and strawberries. Add poppyseed dressing and toss to coat.
- Top with almonds and serve immediately. If making salad ahead of time, toss the salad without the dressing, then add the dressing and toss immediately before serving OR you can serve the dressing on the side.
Notes
**Nutritional info is calculated using all of the dressing and I'm not so sure you would want to use all of it. The dressing recipe makes quite a bit. Nutritional info is also calculated using Just Mayo from Hampton Creek and Lite&Sweet.
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If you’re on the lookout for other summery salads, try these….
Triple Berry Almond Spinach Salad
Healthy Cherry Almond Broccoli Salad
Something to think about….
What’s your favorite summery meal? Do you have a favorite salad recipe? Feel free to share in the comments section, below.
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