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Showing posts with label Southwest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Southwest. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Super Easy Southwest Chicken Salad


Adapted from the salad bar "signature salad" at work. Seriously, if you don't love a good salad bar, pssshhh. C'mon!!! You get to create your own thing!

The salad at work is my usual go-to. I love the really awesome chick that always makes me my special salad who knows I say "I want this already designed salad, but not this, and add this" and doesn't eye roll at me.  The standard salad at work goes a little something like this:

Combo of salad (you know the kind you get bagged at grocery)
Black Beans
Red Onion
Cherry Tomatoes
Corn
Shredded Cheddar
Tortilla Strips
Chipotle Lime Dressing
Chicken Strips

Sorry, place-of-work, that combo sounds great to most, but didn't work for this girl.

I always say - no red onion (onion breath at work is an afternoon ladykiller), no tomato, add red pepper. Switch for ranch dressing. I didn't say this was a healthy salad. Oy Vey.

The chicken is always meh at work, so I decided to change it up and get really fancy with it: season with Taco seasoning. Revolutionary, huh? 2 chicken breasts (for the 2 of us) at 350 degrees for 25 minutes and let them sit for about 5-10 so it doesn't completely wilt your salad.



I always tell my friend at work to 86 the tomatoes but I think I just have a thing - I don't like cherry tomatoes in a salad - sorry!! I do like chopped tomatoes…. Cherry Tomato,  Chopped Tomato? (Toe-may-toe, Toe-mah-toe?)

Anyway, I drained black beans and rinsed them because your salad would be a weird gray color and taste only of black beans and be soggy if you didn't... and drained a can of sweet whole kernel corn and put as much as I wanted of both on top of my salad mix! Yes, my salad mix. It's a big bag of crisp good stuff that I thought was fresh and had the most distant expiration date.. Just do what you want when you make your stuff! I bet this salad would be great with baby spinach, but it's a little too much for my boo. Plus, I always add way too much cheese for my own good that would make others be grossed out. This time I added a mexican cheese mix.


For the dressing I went a bit crazy. I had left over taco seasoning….and OMG added it to my bottled ranch dressing. It was awesome.




So I made my fave salad! What do you like on yours? I always love listening to the combos people request on theirs in line at work and they disgust me, but it makes them happy! I always wonder if the person behind me thinks I have horrible taste in salad toppings!

Plus, I am brainwashing my husband into thinking this salad is healthy….it is, sorta. ;-)