Easy Orange Chicken Salad

This Easy Orange Chicken Salad starts with leftovers from a roast chicken (or start with a rotisserie chicken)

As mentioned earlier this week, I used the leftovers from my Hoisin Orange Roasted Whole Chicken to create a delicious dinner salad for the next night. I used the left-over cooked chicken, the left-over hoisin bacon and the roasted clementines.

But don’t worry. If you don’t want to make the Hoisin Orange Chicken, you can make this salad just as easily starting with cooked chicken from a rotisserie chicken. Add in a few slices of cooked bacon, the fruit, nuts and seeds and you’re good to go!

This salad was made from the leftovers from this Hoisin Orange Roasted Whole Chicken. It’s always great to get two meals from one cook, but you can also make this one from scratch starting with a rotisserie chicken instead.

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.

Cook’s Notes for Easy Orange Chicken Salad

As mentioned above, if you don’t have left-over roast chicken already, pick up a rotisserie chicken and use the chicken from that.

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.

I used goat cheese here, but feta would be nice, or skip the cheese altogether for a dairy free salad.

If you are starting with the left-over roasted clementines from the whole roast chicken, you probably won’t get a ton of juice out of them. I juiced what I could, then topped up with freshly squeeze orange juice.

Since it’s citrus season, I had lots of fresh oranges to use in my salad. Canned mandarin oranges would be a great option anytime, as well.

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.

Easy Orange Chicken Salad

Course: Salad

Cuisine: American

Keyword: chicken salad recipes, orange and chicken salad recipe

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 3 minutes

Total Time: 13 minutes

Servings: 3 servings

Energy: 403 kcal

Author: Jennifer Maloney

Starting with pre-cooked chicken (left-over or start with a rotisserie chicken) makes this healthy and flavourful dinner salad super easy.

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Ingredients

For the salad:

• 4 cups leaf lettuce chopped
• 2 cups cooked chicken* sliced or diced (about 2 small breasts)
• 2 slices cooked bacon* diced
• 1 cup fresh raspberries
• 2 fresh oranges peeled and cut into segments (supremed)
• 1/4 cup chopped walnuts
• 1/3 cup goat cheese crumbles

For the salad dressing:

• 1 tsp orange zest*
• 1/2 cup freshly squeezed orange juice*
• 1 clove garlic minced
• 1 Tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp honey
• Pinch fresh minced ginger
• Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Prepare salad dressing by combining all ingredients in a small bowl or jar. Whisk or shake to combine. Set aside.
2. 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!

Recipe Notes

Notes: I used the leftover roasted chicken, the hoisin bacon and the roasted oranges from my Hoisin Orange Roasted Whole Chicken. It's a great way to cook once and enjoy two great meals!

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