Grilled Chicken Salad

Total Time: About an hour, including lighting the charcoal and heating the grill

Source: Spiced

Servings: 4+

I am so full right now. Full of tasty goodness. We decided that we were tired of eating hot dogs for lunch when there weren’t enough leftovers and Sean had been eyeing this recipe, so we decided to go ahead and try it for lunch… but this could definitely be a dinner salad, and a very filling one at that. Granted, the chicken breasts were bigger than the recipe recommended, but that’s because it’s impossible to find 6 – 8 ounce chicken breasts in a grocery store around here. I tapped out and gave part of my salad to my brother and Sean finished his but definitely could have stopped early. We’re planning on splitting one of the leftover servings tomorrow, which may be a bit small, but I’m pretty confident this could have served at least 6.

The process was easy; the grilling was simple and the indoor prep just consisted of cutting tomatoes in half, chopping olives, tearing up a ball of mozzarella (which, in hindsight, I would have done a bit less vigorously because pieces broke apart as I was tossing the salad and nice big hunks of mozzarella would have been even nicer), and whisking together a few things for a vinaigrette. All of the component pieces came together really nicely, as described in the prologue to the recipe in the cookbook. I’m sold on the importance of different types of salt, as Himalayan sea salt has a distinctly different flavor than table salt and it hit me a few times as I was eating this salad.

Overall, this was a salad I was happy to try but not super thrilled about, but I am definitely looking forward to eating it again tomorrow. I’d even consider making it again, and I am very hesitant to repeat recipes.

P.S. Our plan for keeping this good enough to eat the next day is to keep things divided in containers, so we measured everything out separately and only tossed together half of the contents today. We have two containers with leftovers: one with the tomatoes, olives, mozzarella, and dressing and one with chicken. The arugula will be measured out and tossed with the contents of the first container, the chicken will be reheated and placed on top, and we’ll grind some more salt on the top. This way the salad doesn’t get wilty and we don’t have to eat the chicken cold.