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Most people know that a colorful salad that is loaded with vegetables and healthy green leaves is nutritious and delicious, but over time, the same old salad recipe can kind of lose its luster. We all know that we should eat things like this, but sometimes we just get tired of them.
That is why you need a collection of delicious and nutritious salad recipes. Move away from boring ranch dressing on top of a pile of iceberg lettuce with a few anemic-looking tomatoes and learn to make salads that everyone will rave about.
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Chicken and Spring Mix Salad
Our recipe for Chicken and Spring Mix Salad is the perfect recipe to enjoy for lunch on hot summer afternoons. You can make the baked chicken and the salad dressing mixture ahead of time and simply toss the other ingredients into a bowl to have a quick, easy, and nutritious recipe for lunch.
Equipment
- Baking Pan
- Aluminum foil
- Oven
- Small bowl
- Jar
- large salad bowl
Ingredients
Ingredients for Chicken
- 4 to 6 Boneless skinless chicken tenderloins
- 1 tsp Italian seasoning
- Salt and pepper to taste
- ½ tsp Dried parsley
- ½ tsp Dried oregano
Ingredients for Salad
- 6 cups Spring mix salad blend
- 1 Avocado, cut into chunks
- 1 or 2 Roma tomatoes or another small tomato, chopped
- 4 tbsp Feta cheese, crumbled
- ½ Cucumber, diced
- 4 tbsp Chopped nuts, like almonds, pecans, or walnuts
- 4 tbsp Sliced olives, drained
- 3 tbsp Fresh oregano leaves stripped from the stem
- 2 tbsp Fresh basil leaves, chopped
Dressing Ingredients
- 4 tbsp Olive oil
- 4 tbsp Balsamic vinegar
- 1 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
- 1 tbsp Honey
- Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Line a baking pan with aluminum foil and preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
- In a small bowl, combine the Italian seasoning, parsley and oregano.
- Place the chicken tenders on the foil-lined baking pan. Salt and pepper them on both sides. Sprinkle the seasoning mix on both sides of the chicken pieces.
- Bake the chicken in the oven for about 20 to 30 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through.
- While the chicken is cooking, you can prepare the salad dressing. Into a jar with a tightly fitting lid, measure out the dressing ingredients--the olive oil, the balsamic vinegar, the Dijon mustard, the honey, and the salt and pepper. Tightly cap the jar and shake it well to combine. Set the dressing aside, shaking it before you add it to the salad.
- When the chicken is fully cooked, take it from the oven. Let the chicken cool and then shred it, discarding any pieces of gristle or connective tissue. Set the chicken aside to completely cool.
- In a large salad bowl, combine the salad mix with the basil leaves and oregano leaves. Toss to combine.
- On top of the salad, add the feta cheese, cucumber, avocado, olives, tomatoes and nuts.
- Put the salad on individual plates, topping each one with one fourth of the chopped chicken breast pieces. Drizzle each serving with the prepared dressing and enjoy!
Notes
Our recipe for Chicken and Spring Mix Salad includes a variety of lettuces, some herbs, avocado, tomatoes, Feta cheese, cucumbers, nuts, and olives. The dressing combines the flavors of delicious balsamic vinegar with Dijon mustard and the slight sweetness of honey.
While many people are familiar with lettuces like Romaine and iceberg, some of the salad mixes in the produce aisle may contain leaves that one has never seen before. And that is all the more reason to try them out. There is a huge variety of delicious lettuce leaves with varying flavors, textures, and colors. Spring Mix salad includes a blend of baby lettuces. Baby lettuce is lettuce that is harvested when the leaves are rather small. This gives the lettuce leaves a very mild, sweet flavor and tender texture. Besides baby lettuce, Spring Mix usually includes baby spinach leaves, red and green oak leaf lettuce, arugula, and endive.
Using more unusual lettuces in your salad recipes will be a way of keeping the world of salad exciting. The flavors and textures can generate interest as you add additional toppings to the salad as well. You will wonder why in the world you ever stuck to boring old iceberg lettuce when so many other more flavorful varieties exist. Additionally, there is so much more nutrition in these other kinds of lettuce.
Another way to make salad interesting is to try other salad dressings. Most people are familiar with manufactured salad dressings like Ranch, Thousand Island, and French dressing, but these are only a few of the wonderful flavors that you can enjoy on your salad. Commercially made salad dressings began to be marketed in the early 1900s, but they really began to take off in the 1950s and 1960s.
Commercial dressings are good when you are in a pinch, but did you know that you can create your own salad dressings much more inexpensively? Additionally, freshly made salad dressing tastes better, and it does not have artificial flavors and preservatives in it either. Many people are surprised that commercially made salad dressings have sweeteners and sugars in them. When you make your own, you can control the sweeteners that are in the dressing. Our recipe for the dressing for this salad is delicious as it is, but if you want to experiment and add other flavorings like herbs and spices, feel free to do so.
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