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Southwest Grilled Chicken Salad

January 15, 2021 by Great Grub, Delicious Treats

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Make a healthy and satisfying choice for dinner with a huge serving of this delicious Southwest Grilled Chicken Salad recipe. This is one of my favorite salads and one of the few salads that truly makes an exceptional entrée. This recipe is full of the best southwest inspired ingredients and all kinds of tips to coax the best flavor out of this remarkably sumptuous bed of greens.

A large white bowl with a blue rim filled with southwest grilled chicken salad with a bowl in the background, tortilla strips, and avocados and parsley.

A Big Salad with Southwestern Flair

There are few things in this world as satisfying as a big grilled chicken salad. It’s hearty and healthy. It fills you up, but it doesn’t weigh you down. Salads are great because you can toss them together so easily.

A big salad makes meal preparation as easy as it could possibly get. But that doesn’t mean you have to leave it at that. You also can enhance your salad to do more and be more, especially in the flavor department.

A salad is not just lettuce, carrots, or tomatoes. When you toss together all the components to build a salad big enough to call a meal, you’ve got to include some bigger items like proteins. Southwestern style salads impart some of the most robust flavor and diverse textures to create zesty, spicy, sweet and savory, fully loaded meals with an explosion in every bite.

A large white bowl with a blue rim topped with tomatoes, corns, chicken, avocados, and black beans.

Preparing the Chicken for the Southwest Grilled Chicken Salad

Although it’s a long way off from complicated, the southwest grilled chicken salad is a bit more involved than other salad recipes. Rather than have you dump ingredients in a salad bowl and toss with dressing, this salad requires slightly more finesse. The biggest area that requires a considerable amount of attention is the chicken.

First, you need to combine the seasonings and olive oil to make the ultimate grilled chicken flavor pack. Toss the chicken into the mix and coat thoroughly before you put the chicken in the frying pan. For authentic grilled chicken, use a grill pan. Once the chicken is cooked through, place it on a cutting board to rest and then slice or dice to the desired size.

Make sure the chicken is fully cooked and the internal temperature of the chicken is 165° F.

A bite of southwest grilled chicken salad on a fork with chicken, corn, tomatoes, and lettuce with a large white bowl full of salad in the background.

Rinse Everything

You should always rinse the salad ingredients before combining them together, but this salad requires some additional draining. Don’t just toss in the cans of corn and beans. Dump them separately in a colander or strainer to drain, and make sure to rinse the beans before setting them aside with the other prepped ingredients.

How to Dice Avocado

Avocado is an easy fruit to deal with once you know the proper technique. To remove the avocado, use a sharp chef’s knife to puncture the skin at the top of the avocado. Cut through to the pit and rock your blade around it making a full circle from top to bottom and back around to the top. You should have one solid line separating the whole avocado into two halves.

Take hold of both halves and twist 90 degrees, then pull them apart. It’s very easy to do. If there is any resistance, make sure you have cut all the way through to all sides of the pit. One half of the avocado will contain the pit, just use your chef’s knife to cleave into the pit. With the knife gripping the pit, twist again to separate the pit from the meat.

Take a spoon and dig in along the edge of the meat to separate the skin. Fully encircle the avocado halves until the meat is completely separated. Finally, cut vertical slices along the avocado about 1/2 inch apart, then cut horizontally to make a grid. Use your available hand to help hold the avocado together from above the blade.

Another way is to slice the meat of the avocado while still in the skin, after the seed has been removed. Take a knife and make the desired vertical slices then slice in the opposite direction. Use a spoon and scoop out the avocado and then, if needed, slice into desired bite-size chunks.

A close up photo of a bite of southwest grilled chicken salad with lettuce, tomato, chicken, corn, and dressing atop of a large bowl of salad.

Why Roast the Corn?

You can simply add corn to the salad without roasting it, but roasting corn is easy and it enhances the overall quality of the salad. Roasted corn is sweeter and crunchier, plus you get some kernels with that fabulous char that brings even more complexity to this incredibly flavorful salad.

If you really want to add to the complexity of the salad, you can squeeze some fresh lime juice and sprinkle on some chili powder as you toss the corn in the pan.

How to Dress the Southwest Grilled Chicken Salad

This salad recipe doesn’t have a dressing assigned to it. There is no one particular choice that necessarily beats out any other. The salad speaks for itself in terms of Southwestern flavor. While you wouldn’t add Caesar to it, or probably Italian, you can certainly go with your gut and pick any dressing that works for you.

The best choices for dressing are either a barbecue sauce, or ranch dressing, or some combination of the two. If you use barbecue sauce alone, I recommend a thinner sauce such as Memphis style.

You could choose more vinegar forward North Carolina style sauce, or mustard imbued South Carolina sauce. Although Texas is the most obvious Southwestern choice, it is very thick and best used only as an added component to another dressing such as ranch.

You can also use chipotle ranch or a creamy cilantro lime salad dressing which is almost too obvious to mention, but omitting the option here seemed just as silly. As an alternative to dressing, you can even serve this salad up with a side of some salsa and sour cream.

Ingredients to Make Southwest Grilled Chicken Salad

  • Chicken breasts, sliced in thin strips
  • Slap Ya Mama
  • Garlic salt
  • Pepper
  • Olive oil
  • Avocados
  • Southwest corn, drain and roasted
  • Black beans, drained and rinsed
  • Grape tomatoes
  • Tortilla strips
  • Romaine lettuce
  • Iceberg lettuce
  • Lefty green lettuce

(Actual measurements in recipe card below.)

How to Make Southwest Grilled Chicken Salad

  • In a large bowl, add sliced chicken strips, seasonings, and olive oil. Stir to combine.
  • Add seasoned chicken to a large frying pan and cook thoroughly. Set aside.
  • Wash and cut lettuce to desired size. Set aside.
  • Rinse canned corn and add to a small frying pan. Roast corn over medium high heat.
  • Drain and rinse black beans.
  • Dice avocado into bite size pieces and slice tomatoes in half.
  • Add lettuce, seasoned chicken, roasted corn, black beans, tomatoes, avocados, and tortilla strips. Top with desired dressing.

Double photo collage of southwest grilled chicken salad with a white bowl with a blue rim. Salad topped with tortillas stripes, tomatoes, corn, black beans, avocados, and chicken.

Try This Delicious Southwest Grilled Chicken Salad

A three photo collage of southwest grilled chicken salad topped with grilled chicken, tomatoes, avocados, tortilla strips, corn, black beans, and dressing.

Here are a few more delicious recipes that can be found on the blog:

  • BBQ Bacon Broccoli Avocado Salad
  • BBQ Chicken Avocado Salad with Avocado Dressing
  • Chicken Bacon Ranch Pasta Salad
  • Chicken Curry Pasta Salad

Southwest Grilled Chicken Salad

5 from 3 votes
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 20 mins
Cook Time 20 mins
Course Dinner, Lunch
Cuisine Southwest
Calories

Ingredients
  

  • romaine, iceberg, and leafy greens, desired amount, chopped
  • 2 chicken breasts, sliced in thin strips
  • 2 tsp Slap Ya Mama®
  • 2 tsp garlic salt
  • 1 tsp pepper
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 avocados, diced
  • 11 oz can southwest corn, drained, roasted
  • 15 oz black beans drained, rinsed
  • 1 cup grape tomatoes, halved
  • 1 cup tortilla strips

Instructions
 

  • In a large bowl, add chicken, seasonings, and olive oil. Stir to combine.
  • Add seasoned chicken to a large frying pan and cook thoroughly. Set aside.
  • Wash and cut lettuce to desired size, set aside.
  • Rinse canned corn and add to a small frying pan. Roast corn over medium heat.
  • Drain and rinse black beans.
  • Dice avocado into bite size pieces and tomatoes in half.
  • Add lettuce, seasoned chicken, roasted corn, black beans, avocado, tomatoes and tortilla strips to a bowl. Top with desired dressing.
Keyword Grilled Chicken, Grilled Chicken Salad, Salad, Salad Recipes, Southwest Grilled Chicken Salad
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!

Here are a few pics that are the perfect size for pinning to Pinterest.

Southwest grilled chicken salad in a white bowl with a blue trim. Salad is topped with chicken, corn, black beans, avocados, and tomatoes.

A bite of southwest grilled chicken salad on a fork with dressing, chicken, and a tomato.Enjoy, Terri

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Filed Under: All Recipes, Chicken, Healthy Choices, Main Meals, Salads, Side Dishes Tagged With: Chicken Salad, Grilled Chicken, Healthy, Salad, Southwest, Southwest Grilled Chicken, Southwest Salad

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Comments

  1. Joan L.

    January 24, 2021 at 11:35 am

    Another great recipe. I love all kinds of chicken salads & this one is going to be at the top of my list to make. I like how you choose to use Iceberg lettuce. I think the crunch of it goes great with this salad. Slap Ya Mama does make different seasoning blends. I am guessing you are using the Cajun seasoning blend here, am I correct? I also cannot wait to try making the chicken left whole & grilling it on our charcoal grill (we live in WI so it’ll have to wait until spring). Then, either serve it whole as a regular entree or dice it up for the salad then. YUMMY. Thanks again for a great recipe. Your web site is my favorite web site for recipes.

    • Great Grub, Delicious Treats

      January 24, 2021 at 12:11 pm

      Thank you so much Joan for your lovely comment. I’m so glad you enjoy our recipes. :)
      Yes, I am referring to the Cajun blend of Slap Ya Mama seasoning. My favorite all time seasoning. I’d love to hear how your salad tastes with your grilled whole chicken once you do end up making it.

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Welcome to Great Grub, Delicious Treats! Hello, my name is Terri and I'm so glad you stopped by. I'm a self taught cook/foodie at heart, mom to three kids, photographer and have a love for amazing food. I left my full time job of being a hospice admissions RN, which was super tough and extremely sad, and at times, very rewarding to be there for the patients and families to blog full time which I absolutely love. I hope you enjoy, and check out, all of the delicious recipes on my site while you're here! And don't forget to sign up to receive every new recipe right to your email. Thanks again for stopping by! :)

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Welcome to Great Grub, Delicious Treats! Hello, my name is Terri and I'm so glad you stopped by. I'm a self taught cook/foodie at heart, mom to three kids, photographer and have a love for amazing food. I left my full time job of being a hospice admissions RN, which was super tough and extremely sad, and at times, very rewarding to be there for the patients and families to blog full time which I absolutely love. I hope you enjoy, and check out, all of the delicious recipes on my site while you're here! And don't forget to sign up to receive every new recipe right to your email. Thanks again for stopping by! :) Read More…

Two slices of breakfast pizza on a white plate.
6 tomatillos 4 jalapenos, stems removed 3 serranos, stems removed 2 cloves garlic, roasted ¼ onion ¼ cup water 2 teaspoons salt 2 avocado, diced ⅓ cup cilantro In a medium saucepan, add oil and heat over medium heat. Add garlic cloves and roast until soft. Remove and add to blender or Vitamix. In the same saucepan, add tomatillos, jalapenos, serranos and onion. Cover with cold water and bring to a boil over medium high heat until soft and the color has changed to a pale green. Remove tomatillos and continue boiling the peppers until pale green, if needed. Drain water, reserving ¼ cup. Add the cooked ingredients, salt and ½ cup water. Blend until combined and smooth. Lastly, add avocados and cilantro and blend until smooth. Serve with your favorite chips or top tacos, burritos, beef, chicken or your favorite Mexican recipes.

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