on Mar 27, 2018, Updated Aug 25, 2020 I promised you a ton of salads this summer and here’s another one that’s more like a meal but still a salad. Let’s be honest here. I’ve moved away from thinking salads are enough to understanding that I want to eat salads that truly feel like they are enough for dinner. And there’s a difference you know. I’ve eaten too many salads that feel like bird food to know that I don’t want to touch another one. Which is why you see so many hearty salad recipes on this food blog which are really like a meal. They’ve got the lettuce, but they’ve also got ingredients like eggs, beans, chicken, prawns, corn and even pasta that help fill you up. Does that make them healthy? Absolutely! All my salads – Chicken Cobb Salad, Mexican Prawn Taco Salad, Grilled Chicken Mango Salad and this Southwest Chicken Quinoa Bean Salad have ingredients that are good for you and taste amazing when put together with a fabulous dressing. I don’t mean to confuse you but this time I have two dressing recipes for this southwest chicken quinoa bean salad. One is a cilantro lime dressing (more like a vinaigrette) and the other one is a creamy southwest dressing that has cilantro, garlic, olive oil, greek yogurt and sour cream. And both work perfectly with this salad! Let’s start with the first dressing: Made with a few simple ingredients – cilantro (coriander), lime juice, olive oil, honey, chipotle powder, garlic, oregano and salt, this dressing also doubles up as a marinade for the chicken that you’ll be grilling for this salad. It has the right amount of acidity and is loaded with flavour. So you see – double the flavour when you use that salad dressing and smother your chicken in it before you grill or pan fry it! Here’s the second dressing. This is a creamy southwest dressing – I really don’t know what else to call it – that’s got my heart when I want all the creaminess in my salad and want a dressing that sticks to every bit of the salad. I may or may not have licked the spoon clean after I made it. This one is also made in a blender and includes sour cream, yogurt, cilantro, garlic, olive oil, chipotle powder, oregano, lime juice and salt. The ingredients are similar to the cilantro lime dressing but we add sour cream and yogurt for extra creaminess factor. Lets just say that I’m drowning this southwest chicken quinoa bean salad. Which doesn’t sound appetizing at all. But no judging here. Hello, caramelisation on chicken! I’m glad we are friends!
More Salads That Count As A Meal:
Chicken Cobb Salad with Avocado Blue Cheese DressingBarley Chicken Salad with Herb VinaigretteGrilled Chicken Mango Salad with Mango Cilantro DressingCrunchy Chinese Chicken SaladMexican Prawn Avocado Taco SaladCucumber Noodle Prawn and Mango Salad
In other news, I’ve been running #featuresundays on Instagram to feature all you wonderful people who try out MFS recipes! If you are one of them and love taking pictures of your food, tag them @my_foodstory when you post on Instagram and I’ll be featuring you too. PIN THIS TO YOUR SALAD BOARD
