Salads never need be boring! Liven up your salad plate with spicy chicken and tangy Blue Cheese dressing in this Buffalo Chicken Salad.
Buffalo wings are a wonderful party snack, but there isn’t a whole lot of substance to them. As good as they are, they do not make a meal. Really. They don’t.
I’ve taken it upon myself to take delicious favorite flavors of traditional dishes and tweak them. Jalapeno Poppers Potatoes? Yes, please. Nicoise Salad Wraps? Sign me up.
One of my favorite tweaks: Grilled Buffalo Chicken. I took typical buffalo wing seasonings and doused them on boneless, skinless chicken breast.
Cook up extra and toss that chicken on a bed of greens with grape tomatoes, chopped celery, and blue cheese dressing? Yum! And throw on a good handful of cilantro, just for kicks. Yum-O!
That’s what you get with this Buffalo Chicken Salad – all the flavors of the classic Buffalo Wings plate and then some.
Note: if you’re doing paleo or Whole 30, swap out the dressing for this one.
(Psst. It’s also good all rolled up in a wrap, too.)
How to make this good and cheap:
Here are some of the strategies you can use to make this recipe more economical:
- Stock up on ingredients when they are on sale. The chicken is the high price items in this recipe. Watch for sales and stock up.
- Make your own dressings. Bottled dressings are either way too expensive or full of junk. I love to make my own dressings. Not only are they quick and economical to prepare, but they allow me to control the ingredients that I use.
- Save your cilantro. Store your cilantro properly so it doesn’t go to waste as a mass of brown goo in the vegetable drawer.
How I make this recipe easy:
This recipe really couldn’t be easier than it is, but having the right kitchen tools can really make your time in the kitchen more enjoyable. Over time, I’ve honed my collection so that they are perfect for my needs.
Here are the tools that I use for this recipe:
- plastic cutting boards – I have blue boards for veggies and white boards for meat.
- Ergo Chef chef’s knife – I’ve had my set for several years and they work well.
- salad spinner – I love this large model salad spinner with a salad serving bowl.
Buffalo Chicken Salad
Salads never need be boring! Liven up your salad plate with spicy chicken and tangy Blue Cheese dressing in this Buffalo Chicken Salad.
Preparation Time:15 minutes
Cook time:15 minutes
Total time:30 minutes
4 servings
Ingredients:
- 8 cups mixed greens, spinach or torn romaine lettuce
- 2 ribs celery, chopped
- 1 cup grape tomatoes
- 1 batch Buffalo Chicken, cooked and sliced
- 1 batch Blue Cheese Dressing, omit for whole 30
- 2 chopped scallions
- handful chopped cilantro
Instructions:
- Divide the salad greens among 4 dinner-size plates. Distribute the celery and tomatoes evenly among the four plates. Top each plate with the cooked chicken. At this point, you can cover the salads and refrigerate for later.
- Drizzle the salads with the dressing. Top with scallions and cilantro, and serve.
Updated April 22, 2017.
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Wow that looks fabulous! I love buffalo chicken and blue cheese, so I’m DEFINITELY going to try this recipe. I wonder if shredded carrots would be a good addition also?
This sounds great! Love buffalo flavored anything!
I have been making Pioneer Woman’s Buttermilk Chicken Strips and them dousing them in hot sauce and using them to top our salads….we love buffalo chicken! I think we’ll be adding this to the menu again very soon!
Buffalo chicken pizza is my favorite pizza, so I’m thinking this salad would be a great, healthier alternative!
It’s my day for a blog hop, I’d love it if you came over and shared one of your great recipes at savory sunday!! Have a great day 🙂
That looks delicious. The picture made my mouth water!
I just love the idea of buffalo wings flavor on REAL pieces of chicken. Wings don’t cut it for me either! This looks great and I will definitely be trying it.
As far as the buffalo chicken pizza goes, what is the base sauce people use? Thanks whoever has ideas!
I haven’t tried it yet, but when I do, I’m going without sauce.
When I make buffalo chicken pizza I season the chicken breasts with salt, pepper, granulated garlic, italian seaoning, whatever you like then bake till done. Chop into little pieces and set aside. For the sauce I take FRANK’S Red Hot Sauce, and some butter not a lot but a some and pop it into the microwave, when its done I stir it well use it as a base sauce and then assemble my pizza. Once its done baking I use a little more of the base sauce as a drizzle then serve with ranch or blue cheese dressing as a dipping sauce. Mmmmmmm I love hm pizza night at our house!!!
@Dana, that made my mouth water!
@Dana, I am from Buffalo and we just call them chicken wings, LOL. Put them on Pizza and yumma! We have a weekly pizza night and I make Chicken wing pizza about once a month. Just the way Dana suggested. I do add a regular amount of pizza sauce on the bottom. You could just put blue cheese dressing on for a sauce. Man recipes suggest that. It is soooooooooooooooo gooooooood!
This sounds sooo good. I have been wanting to try a buffalo chicken salad for a long time! I do the same as you…turning all of my favorites into pizza or a salad 🙂
I love to see a green salad with sort of a greek bent to it. I like Romaine or leaf lettuce with spinach, olives, tomatoes, Pepperoncini peppers, feta cheese, fresh ground pepper, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, sea salt and some cucumbers….
Yummy!
When I make buffalo pizza, I use ranch dressing instead of sauce and I also throw some bacon bits on.
My family loves buffalo chicken. If I attempt to make a salad without buffalo flavoring on the chicken, my husband and sons *must* doctor their salads to make them buffalo. They love my buffalo chicken pizza, too.
How do they doctor them?