This easy fresh orange and chicken Salad starts with leftover cooked chicken or chicken from a rotisserie chicken. Add to the mix is fresh orange pieces, raspberries, nuts, seeds and bacon! All tossed in an orange soy dressing.
Why I love this orange chicken salad
- This chicken salad is the perfect use for leftover cooked chicken or with chicken from a rotisserie chicken!
- This salad is loaded with great flavours and textures.
- I absolutely loved the salad dressing on this one. Full of orange flavour, with a hint of soy sauce, it also is an oil-free salad dressing, which was such a nice change.
Ingredients and Substitutions
Chicken – As mentioned above, if you don’t have left-over roast chicken already, pick up a rotisserie chicken and use the chicken from that.
Oranges – you’ll need fresh oranges for the orange segments, as well as juice and zest for the dressing. One or two navel oranges or a few more smaller oranges will work. Use whatever type of oranges you have or enjoy. Canned mandarin oranges would be a great option anytime, as well.
Goat Cheese – I used goat cheese here, but feta would be nice, or skip the cheese altogether for a dairy free salad.
Cook’s Notes
This salad is a bit of a kitchen sink salad. I added raspberries from the fridge and walnuts from the pantry. Any fresh or dried fruit (dried cranberries would be great!), nuts and seeds would be great.
How to Supreme Fresh Oranges
Unfortunately, we can’t just chop up fresh orange to add to salads. There’s all that bitter pith and those pesky membranes that we’d rather not eat with our salad. So when it comes to oranges, we need to “supreme” them. It’s a fancy term, but what it means is that we want to cut the orange segments out, while leaving the bitter, white pith behind.
To supreme and orange, use a sharp knife to cut away the peel and white pith layer, just exposing the fruit. Then, carefully cut a v-shaped cut between the thin white membrane that separates the orange segments, to create a lovely chunk of orange with no nasty stuff.
Get the Recipe: Easy Orange and Chicken Salad
Ingredients
For the salad:
- 4 cups leaf lettuce, chopped
- 2 cups cooked chicken, sliced or diced (about 2 small breasts)
- 2 slices cooked bacon, crumbled (optional)
- 1 cup fresh raspberries
- 2 fresh oranges, peeled and cut into segments (*see Notes for how to cut oranges)
- 1/4 cup chopped walnuts, or pecans
- 1/3 cup goat cheese crumbles, or feta
For the salad dressing:
- 1 teaspoon orange zest
- 1/2 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 1 Tablespoon soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon honey
- Pinch fresh minced ginger
- Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
Instructions
- Prepare salad dressing by combining all ingredients in a small bowl or jar. Whisk or shake to combine. Set aside.
- Line a salad bowl with the chopped lettuce. Top with chicken, bacon, raspberries, oranges, walnuts and goat cheese crumbles. Drizzle with salad dressing. Toss to coat. Enjoy!
Notes
More Salad Recipes to Love!
Hi! I’m Jennifer, a home cook schooled by trial and error and almost 40 years of getting dinner on the table! I love to share my favourite recipes, both old and new, together with lots of tips and tricks to hopefully help make your home cooking enjoyable, stress free, rewarding and of course, delicious!
Great post Jennifer!! Love the easy citrus dressing without the olive oil – sounds fabulous!!
Thanks so much, Anna! The dressing was such a nice change from the usual. So light and fresh!
Just beautiful, this is a must make for lunch this week :)
Thanks Laura and yes, a perfect lunch salad!
I wonder if I could ‘doctor up’ some rotisserie chicken with those flavors for this salad, it looks amazing!
Thanks Sue and yes, rotisserie chicken would work nicely as well!
This salad is gorgeous Jennifer! What a treat, any time of year but I really nice refreshing respite now with so many heavy comfort foods everywhere.
Thanks so much Chris and yes, it was a nice light break from the heavy stuff :)
This is my kind of dinner salad Jennifer. Love the oranges and bet that leftover orange Hoisin chicken is fantastic in this. Have a great weekend and thanks for the beautiful inspiration!
Thanks so much, Tricia and yes, the chicken was great and that Hoisin bacon, as well! Have a great weekend, too :)