I like feeding my children salad as a main dish for dinner. All four of them would rather eat noodles with red sauce and that is exactly why I keep offering crisp greens with fresh vegetables. They obviously don’t like it enough, yet…
Sometimes we just make salad wraps with things they love like mandarin oranges and ranch and sometimes I try to push their taste limits a little further with a bit more diversity. This chicken salad recipe falls in the second category. It has the red pepper to satisfy the children’s need for familiarity, but cabbage and a lime-cilantro dressing that pushes the kids comfort limits just a little bit.
This salad is easy to throw together and satisfying as a main dish. You can use the store bought shredded cabbage and the box of mixed greens so dinner can be ready in under fifteen minutes. It also uses pre-cooked chicken, so I used some grilled chicken that we had as leftovers, You can also use this salad as a perfect excuse to head to Costco and buy all sorts of things you don’t need in order to purchase one rotissierre chicken.
2 cups cilantro leaves
1/4 cup fresh lime juice (from 2 limes)
1/4 cup vegetable oil
coarse salt and ground pepper
4 cups cooked chicken, this can be the shredded meat from 1 rotisserie chicken, or a few large grilled chicken breasts sliced or diced
1/4 medium cabbage, 8 ounces, or half a 16 ounce shredded bag of cabbage
1 red bell pepper, diced
2 scallions, thinly sliced
1 large head romaine lettuce torn into bite sized pieces or large bag of mixed greens
1/2 cup cashews
Make the dressing in a blender. Combine the cilantro, lime juice and oil. Season with salt and pepper and blend until smooth.
In a large bowl combine the chicken, cabbage, red pepper and scallions. Season with salt and pepper. In another bowl, toss the lettuce with 1/4 cup of the dressing. Divide the lettuce into four bowls and then top with the chicken mixture. Drizzle the remaining dressing over the salad and top with cashews.
Recipe adapted from the magazine Real Simple Food.
- 2 cups cilantro leaves
- ¼ cup fresh lime juice (from 2 limes)
- ¼ cup vegetable oil
- coarse salt and ground pepper
- 4 cups cooked chicken, this can be the shredded meat from 1 rotisserie chicken, or a few large grilled chicken breasts sliced or diced
- ¼ medium cabbage, 8 ounces, or half a 16 ounce shredded bag of cabbage
- 1 red bell pepper, diced
- 2 scallions, thinly sliced
- 1 large head romaine lettuce torn into bite sized pieces or large bag of mixed greens
- ½ cup cashews
- Make the dressing in a blender. Combine the cilantro, lime juice and oil. Season with salt and pepper and blend until smooth.
- In a large bowl combine the chicken, cabbage, red pepper and scallions. Season with salt and pepper. In another bowl, toss the lettuce with ¼ cup of the dressing. Divide the lettuce into four bowls and then top with the chicken mixture. Drizzle the remaining dressing over the salad and top with cashews.