Salads never need be boring! Liven up your salad plate with spicy chicken and tangy Blue Cheese Dressing in this delicious Buffalo Chicken Salad. Chopped celery, tomatoes, cilantro, and green onion round out the flavors for a salad that is truly out of this world.
This Buffalo Chicken Salad is perfect for Meal Prep Salads. What a great Lunchtime Meal Prep to Help You Save Money!
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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. Not unless you each twenty of them.
I’ve taken it upon myself to take delicious favorite flavors of traditional dishes and tweak them to make them doable at home and easy on the wallet.
Jalapeno Poppers Potatoes? Yes, please.
Nicoise Salad Wraps? Sign me up.
One of my favorite tweaks: Buffalo Chicken. I took typical buffalo wing seasonings and doused them on boneless, skinless chicken breast. You can grill it or bake it in the oven for a Buffalo-themed dinner that is delicious!
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.
Why Make This
It’s good. This Buffalo Chicken Salad combines all the great flavors of an appetizer plate in a nutrient-dense salad. Sooo very tasty!
It’s cheap. Can you believe that you can make FOUR main dish salads for the price of one plate of wings?! Just $1.58 per person!
It’s easy. With your chicken already cooked, this salad comes together in minutes.
Ingredients
Here’s what you’ll need to make a tasty Buffalo Chicken Salad at home:
baby greens – Pre-washed baby greens help you pull this salad together in a flash. If you prefer, you can use baby spinach or your favorite lettuce, torn or chopped into bite-sized pieces.
celery – Celery sticks are a classic accompaniment to Buffalo Chicken, making chopped celery a great addition to this salad.
tomatoes – You can use chopped tomatoes or small, bite-sized ones. Grape or cherry tomatoes are best if you’re going to pack salads for work or school as they won’t drip juice on the salad greens.
Buffalo Chicken – You can top your salads with Buffalo Chicken Bites, sliced pieces of Grilled Buffalo Chicken, or commercial buffalo flavored chicken meat. If you like, you can simply toss chopped, cooked chicken in buffalo sauce before adding to the salad. A rotisserie chicken will help you save time.
Blue Cheese Dressing – This is the traditional dipping sauce for Buffalo Chicken. I like to make homemade Blue Cheese Dressing as it’s so easy, but you can use your favorite bottled variety or substitute ranch dressing instead.
green onion – Chopped green onion gives a nice little kick to the salad. You can substitute it with sliced red onion or chopped sweet onion.
fresh cilantro – I love the flavor fresh cilantro brings to salads, but you can also use fresh dill or basil instead.
Step-by-Step Instructions
Here’s how to make your Buffalo Chicken Salad:
- 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.
FAQs & Recipe Costs
You either love blue cheese dressing… or you don’t. If you fall into the latter category, serve your buffalo chicken salad with ranch or your favorite creamy dressing. Some people enjoy more buffalo sauce on top as well.
A rotisserie chicken is a great shortcut for adding protein to a salad. Carve the chicken away from the bone, chop into bite-sized pieces, and toss the chicken with a bit of buffalo sauce to add a bit of Buffalo flavor before adding the chicken to the salad.
Leftover chicken is great in salads, on pizza, and made into Buffalo Chicken Wraps.
Recipe Costs
Knowing how much it costs you to prepare a recipe can help you decide if it’s the type of recipe to make regularly or one you might want to save for special occasions. Let’s crunch some numbers and see how this recipe pencils out.
- baby greens – $1.99
- celery – $0.30
- tomatoes – $0.30
- Buffalo Chicken Bites – $2.09
- Blue Cheese Dressing – $1.33
- green onion – $0.20
- fresh cilantro – $0.10
While your costs may vary depending on where and how you shop, you can expect to pay about $6.31 for four Buffalo Chicken Salads, about $1.58/serving.
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.
More 30-Minute Meals
Buffalo Chicken Salad
Ingredients
- 1 6-ounce package baby greens
- 2 ribs celery chopped
- 1 cup grape tomatoes
- 1 batch Buffalo Chicken Bites cooked
- 1 batch Blue Cheese Dressing
- 2 green onion (chopped)
- fresh cilantro (chopped)
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.
Notes
Nutrition
This post was originally published on May 14, 2011. It has been updated for content and clarity.
Christina
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.
Jessica
How do they doctor them?
Brenda
When I make buffalo pizza, I use ranch dressing instead of sauce and I also throw some bacon bits on.
Martha Artyomenko
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!
Katie
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 🙂
Holli
As far as the buffalo chicken pizza goes, what is the base sauce people use? Thanks whoever has ideas!
Jessica
I haven’t tried it yet, but when I do, I’m going without sauce.
Dana
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!!!
Holli
@Dana, that made my mouth water!
claire
@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!
P Reis
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.
Anna
That looks delicious. The picture made my mouth water!
amanda
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 🙂
Mo'Betta
Buffalo chicken pizza is my favorite pizza, so I’m thinking this salad would be a great, healthier alternative!
Julie H
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!
Debbi Does Dinner Healthy
This sounds great! Love buffalo flavored anything!
Nickeletta
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?