Salads are a favorite in our family, even my stepdaughter loves salad…you know, as long as it only has cheese and carrots on it and Italian dressing to top 🙂 I slowly try to sneak more into her salads, but so far I’ve only been successful with adding carrots. I’ll take it for now! Back on Valentine’s Day, I added heart shaped cucumbers to her salad and she ever so politely said “I know you spent a lot of time on these and I’m really sorry, but I just don’t like cucumbers” Ha It was too sweet and luckily her Dad will eat anything left on her plate or anything that gets handed from her plate to his so they certainly weren’t wasted. I think that’s a Dad thing, because I have some vague memories of my own Dad taking “perfectly good food” that I wouldn’t eat off my plate too back in the day!

I found the recipe and made this southwestern salad quite a while ago, but then sadly lost the link to the exact recipe until I randomly came across it again just a few days ago…talk about exciting! I couldn’t wait to make it again and share it right here! It was also my motivation to make homemade taco seasoning, which ironically doesn’t really require much motivation at all given the ease of the process!

I was a little skeptical of the combination of dressing ingredients when I first made this salad, but it’s really delicious! And the great part about the actual salad is you can easily customize it based on what you like best…you could try garbanzo beans, white shoepeg corn or different/additional types of bell peppers for instance! Check out the recipe below and enjoy!

Southwestern Chopped Chicken Salad

Ingredients:

Salad:

• 2 cups cooked shredded or diced chicken
• 1 green bell pepper, diced
• 1 can black beans, rinsed
• 1 can yellow corn
• 4 roma tomatoes, diced
• 4 green onions, sliced
• 1 bag romaine lettuce, washed and chopped
• 1/4 cup cilantro, chopped
• 2 ripe avocados, diced
• 1 cup crushed tortilla chips

• 1/2 cup miracle whip
• 2/3 cup plain greek yogurt (helpful tip – this is one 5.3 oz container of yogurt)
• 1 Tbsp ranch seasoning
• 1 Tbsp homemade taco seasoning

Instructions:

• In a large bowl, combine all prepped salad ingredients, excluding the tortilla chips.
• In a separate bowl, stir all dressing ingredients together.
• Gradually add dressing to the salad and toss to evenly coat. (Amount of dressing used will be based on preference; you may not need all of it)
• Top with tortilla chips and enjoy!

 

As always, thanks for reading!!