CHINESE CHICKEN SALAD

Chinese Chicken Salad is a light, flavorful salad made with grilled chicken, oranges, crunchy chow mein noodles, lettuce & topped with sesame dressing. It’s a fantastic summer dinner!

This Chinese chicken salad recipe is a great light meal and perfect for summer time when it is too hot to cook. By using a store bought Asian salad dressing, it comes together quick and easy!

What Is Chinese Chicken Salad?

Chinese chicken salad is a traditional green salad topped with Asian flavors that help to give it it’s namesake. The salad itself can be made any number of ways but the combination of mandarin oranges, crunchy noodles, and Asian dressing really help to give the salad it’s full cultural feel, despite the salad being an American dish.

Despite the name, Chinese chicken salad, this dish is believed to have been invented by an Austrian chef. Other claim this tasty dish was invented in the 1930’s somewhere in the United States. No matter where it originated from, we are glad to be able to enjoy it and share our version with you all.

Tip for making Chinese Chicken Salad

Here are a couple helpful tips to hopefully make this recipe so simple and with as least amount of effort as possible.

• Using shredded chicken, this salad can be made pretty frugally. You can pull the shredded meat off of a leftover rotisserie chicken or do like I do and put 6 chicken breasts in the slow cooker for a few hours to purposely make shredded chicken for recipes like this.
• This recipe calls for a store bought Asian salad dressing, you can find many different brands in your local grocery store. You can also make a homemade version if you would like to.
• You can jazz this salad up with more tasty ingredients if you’d like. Add some seeds or nuts, beans or other legumes, to make this salad dish a bit more robust.

Chinese Chicken Salad Ingredients

Chicken: You will need 1 cup of cooked chicken, shredded, to give this dish some protein and make it a complete and filling meal.

Onion: Use 2 green onions, sliced thin, to add a nice subtle tangy flavor to this dish.

Lettuce: For the base of this salad, you will need 5-6 cups of romaine lettuce, washed and torn up.

Oranges: Add in (1-2) 11-ounce cans of mandarin oranges for wonderful flavor and texture in this salad.

Chow mein noodles: For some great texture, add in ½ cup of chow mein noodles.

Dressing: Using 2-3 tablespoons of an Asian style salad dressing, store bought or homemade, will give this salad great flavor and moisture.

How to Make Chinese Chicken Salad

Prep

For this salad recipe, the chicken needs to be cooked and shredded. We have this easy to follow recipe for shredded chicken or you can use a store bought rotisserie chicken to really simplify this recipe.

Also, slice the green onions into small pieces and set them aside.

Once the chicken is cooked, begin to assemble the salad.

Assemble

Start by washing the lettuce, dry it with a paper towel, then tear it into pieces and transfer to a large bowl.

Next, drain the liquid from the can of mandarin oranges and pour them into the bowl.

Then add in the chow mein noodles, the sliced green onion and the shredded chicken to the bowl with lettuce.

After that, drizzle the dressing over the top and toss all the ingredients together. Make sure to toss well to coat all the ingredients with the dressing.

Serve immediately and enjoy!

What Should I Serve With Chinese Chicken Salad?

If you want to make this a more full and complete meal to feed your family, consider adding some amazing Asian inspired side dishes. Some fried rice would add a great filling dish to this salad meal. Or some pot stickers, wontons, spring egg rolls would be great too. If you want to get a bit fancier, serve some crab rangoons, or Yakisoba noodles, to get the most out of this meal. No matter what you serve with this salad it will be a tasty meal!

Is Chinese chicken salad healthy?

This dish could be considered pretty healthy, especially when you compare it to everything unhealthy that you could be filling up on. With leafy greens, fruit, and chicken for protein, you have a great option on the plate in front of you.

Do I have to use shredded chicken?

You do not need to use shredded chicken. This salad would be great with chopped, sliced grilled, or sautéed, chicken too. You can even use canned white chicken breast meat if you wanted to make the recipe simpler.

How long is Chinese Chicken Salad good for?

This salad recipe is best when enjoyed the day you made it. But, if you know you are not going to eat it all, reserve some of the salad and keep the dressing separate until you are ready to eat it. If you do not put the dressing on the salad, it will save in an airtight container in the fridge for 2-3 days pretty well.

Check out more of our tasty Salad Recipes here:

• 5 Minute Chicken Salad
• Orange Cream and Fruit Salad
• Fancy Fruit Salad
• Pizza Pasta Salad
• Grilled Chicken Salad with Pesto Ranch Dressing
• Patriotic Layered Jello Salad
• Fiesta Ranch Chicken Pasta Salad
• Strawberry Pretzel Salad
• Easy Taco Salad
• Chicken BLT Salad
• Raspberry Ambrosia Salad
• Snickers Apple Salad
• Cream Cheese Grape Salad

Chinese Chicken Salad is a tasty and simple meal that is a perfect and flavor filled twist on a classic green salad. This recipe for Chinese chicken salad is packed with incredible flavors, the mandarin oranges and crunchy noodles make a wonderful texture combination too.