BBQ Chicken Salad w./ Spicy Lime Salad Dressing

I've been trying to come up with something that could improve the quality of my lunch recently.  Sandwiches, a banana, and a pudding cup (or whatever), get boring after weeks of the same old thing.  I like taking a salad now and again, but that gets boring, too.  My wife has tried to up the ante on our daily lunches by getting many more fresh veggies, which puts pressure on making sure we get through them before they go to waste.  In a scenario with many, MANY packages of veggies, the best option is in fact to make a salad.  We decided to go a bit different this time around, and put a little spin on the normal "lettuce, cheese, dressing" type of salad that had become normal when packing a lunch in a hurry.



I was on twitter Sunday morning, and saw a picture someone on my feed had tweeted.  It was a picture of the most delicious looking BBQ Chicken Salad I'd ever seen.  It was very basic, outside of the chicken, at least from what I could tell.  I decided that this is what I wanted my lunch to be for the week, and the wife and I hit the road to the grocery store.  We had a thought process with the salad, and that was that we wanted to go a little more Southwestern with it's influence, rather than just slathering BBQ sauce on chicken and throwing it in some lettuce and calling it a day.  Throwing in charred fresh-shucked corn, sweet peppers, celery, tomato and onion along with the BBQ chicken makes a perfect marriage of flavor and color, tied together with a Spicy Lime Salad Dressing my wife came up with the recipe for.  Here are the ingredients you'll need:

BBQ Chicken Salad
1lb. of Chicken Breasts, trimmed to your liking
1 container of 50/50 Salad Mix
1 Bottle of Favorite BBQ Sauce
Assortment of Veggies (preferential)

Spicy Lime Salad Dressing
1/2 Cup EVOO (Extra Virgin Olive Oil)
Tbsp. of Honey
1 Tsp. of Cayenne
1 Tsp. of Cumin
2 limes, juiced
Lime Zest (grate outside peel of lime)
Salt & Pepper (to taste)

Trim the chicken and cut it into strips of like size; with a little bit of EVOO, brown the chicken in the pan and season to your liking with salt and pepper.  Once the chicken has been browned, I like to grab a baking sheet and some foil, lay out the strips, douce them with the appropriate amount of BBQ sauce, and sprinkle a little bit of corn meal on top.  I let them bake for about 20 minutes, so that the BBQ sauces will harden around the chicken.

Once the chicken is in the oven, you can start prepping your veggies.  As I said earlier, I like that Southwestern flair of our salad, because of the color and flavors, but this is a preferential stage of the recipe, use whatever you like.  Cut up all the veggies and put into a container together, but remember to keep the veggies separate from the salad, as the moisture from them will wilt the lettuce faster.

The dressing is fairly easy to make, but you may need to make it in a blender if you do not have a dressing shaker or bottle available.  First, juice your 2 limes, and after collecting juice and pulp, grab a grater, and collect lime zest that you can just add directly into the juice.  Pour juice into bottle, along with your EVOO and the remaining dry ingredients.  Shake the bottle to mix your dressing.  Add or subtract ingredients to taste, but this was spicy with enough kick for both my wife and I.

After 15 minutes bake time, take chicken out and bring it to cool on baking sheet.  Once cooled, store in separate container from veggies and salad mix.  Dress the salad accordingly with your Spicy Lime Dressing.

This is an easy lunch solution that can break up the monotony of your normal everyday take-along, and can save you money as well by providing food for several days, rather than just over the course of 1 day.  Any good suggestions you could recommend to kick this salad up another notch, feel free to comment below.

Thanks for reading, and as always,

Eat On.

--Justin