Chipotle Chicken Salad Recipe - Gluten Free & Make Ahead Friendly (2024)

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This Chipotle Chicken Salad is full of tender chicken, smokey bacon, creamy blue cheese, sweet peaches, and an amazingly tangy vinaigrette. SO easy, healthy, and delish!

Thanks to Tabasco for sponsoring today’s post. Their Chipotle Tabasco Sauce gives this recipe the smoky kick it needs.🙌

I am SO excited about today’sChipotle Chicken Salad Recipe, because today, Trevor and I are participating in the2016 TABASCO 10 Ingredient Challenge, say whaaaat?!

Here’s the deal.

Matt – from Real Food by Dad – came up with an ingredient list of 10 items. We could ONLY use 10 ingredients (+ salt, peppa, and olive oil, of course) and it needed to be grilling focused, because hellloooo let’s make the most ofthese last few days of summer, amiright?

I immediately knew I wanted to:

1. Make a salad. It’s still like 10000% humidity here in Madison.
2. “Grill” indoors, so we can enjoy this salad all year round. Gotta love my grill pan.
3. Hit all the flavor notes: sweet, smokey, spicy, savory, tangy, creamy <– did I miss any?
4. And of course, make it easy, because we’re still Show Me the Yummy: Easy Recipes for Yummy Food.

With all of those things in mind, here you go, a killer salad that’s PACKED with flavor and still super simple: the Chipotle Chicken Salad.

See?!If you watched the video above👆, you KNOW I’m not lying when I say this is one salad you’ll want to make for the rest of summer.

But let’s back it up a sec, because I want you guys to see the ingredient list I was working with

From that, I chose to use chicken breast, arugula, bacon, blue cheese, red onion, peaches – because they’re so.darn.juicy. – quinoa, lime, and cilantro – because it’s my all time favorite herb in the whole entire world🌿.

ThisChipotle Chicken Salad starts with a little marinated chicken breast and the amazing part is that all you need is two ingredients:

• Tabasco Chipotle Sauce

• Chicken breast

Totally simple, yet filled with smokey, spicy flavor, yes?

That sits for a bit, while we get the bacon going.

Today, we’re using thick cut bacon, cooking it in our grill pan, and then cooking our chicken breast IN the bacon fat.

Yeah. I went there.

So bacon iscooked, chicken gets ah-mazing grill marks – yet still gets that super delicious smoky flavor without the hassle of your outside grill (which is alllllll the way upstairs for us 😉 )thanks to Tabasco Chipotle Sauce, and then finishes baking in the oven.

Bacon✔️

Chicken✔️

Now for the dressing.

FOUR ingredients people: Olive oil, lime juice, Tabasco Chipotle Sauce, and salt. Give it a whisk, and you’ve got yourself a tangy, smokey flavor bomb of a salad dressing.

Allthat’s left is to assemble!

Mix together the cooked and cubed chicken, crumbled bacon, arugula, quinoa – cook it in chicken broth if you really want to blow your mind – blue cheese, sliced red onion, sliced peaches, minced cilantro, and that amazing dressing you just made.

The result is the BESTand the EASIESTChipotle Chicken Salad.

I’m telling you, after I made this, Trevor and I literally ate the entire thing in one sitting out of tupperware containers. It’s so addicting, because it’s just got so many great flavors and textures going on.

Tender chicken, smokey bacon, crispyarugula and fresh cilantro, creamy blue cheese, crunchyred onion, sweet peaches?!

AHHHH. It’s too good.

– Jennifer

Now. I challenge YOU to take the2016 TABASCO 10 Ingredient Challenge. What would you make using the above ingredients? Show Me the Yummy! Need inspiration?Make sure to check out the other bloggers who participated in the #Tabasco10 Challenge:

• • Real Food by Dad
  • Flav City with Bobby Parrish
  • Natasha’s Kitchen
  • Tatyana’s Everyday Food

Thanks again toTabasco for sponsoring today’s post! We seriously♡ all things spicy and delicious.