BBQ Chicken Salad Bowl

I wrote in my June recap that I kind of forgot to switch up my cooking for the warm weather months, so I’ve been looking for summery recipes to try lately. I kept seeing this salad bowl on Mel’s Kitchen Café when I was searching for her cilantro lime rice, and gave it a try this week. Like the Sweet Potato & Black Bean Burrito Bowls, it has a lot of components, but once everything is mixed, chopped and ready, you can have it all in the fridge to assemble salad bowls for a few days.

The base of these bowls is crunchy romaine lettuce, and it gets topped with rotisserie chicken (tossed in BBQ sauce), a quick black bean and corn sauté, avocado, cherry tomatoes and a scoop of cilantro lime rice. The sauce is a zesty homemade Cilantro Lime BBQ dressing that is super flavourful and gets drizzled all over the top.

Naked Salad Bowl

Once I mixed this up, and was happily chopping away, I realized exactly what I was eating: the Freshii Pangoa Bowl! This used to be my go-to order at Freshii, and I always asked for both BBQ sauce and spicy yogurt sauce on it, which is basically what the dressing on this salad is. I think this would also be really good with Jalapeño Lime Dressing for something a bit lighter, so I’ll try that next time.

BBQ Chicken Salad Bowls

Source: Mel’s Kitchen Café

Ingredients

Cilantro Lime BBQ Dressing

  • 1/2 cup mayo
  • 2/3 cup buttermilk
  • 1/3 cup BBQ sauce
  • 1 tbsp lime juice
  • 1 tbsp red or white wine vinegar
  • 2 tbsp chopped cilantro
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • pinch freshly ground black pepper

Salad Bowl Components

  • chopped romaine lettuce
  • shredded rotisserie chicken, tossed with BBQ sauce
  • cilantro lime rice
  • sautéed black beans and corn (follow instructions in this post, and add a cup of frozen corn)
  • chopped cherry tomatoes
  • diced avocado
  • chopped cilantro
  • sliced red onion (I left this out)
  • shredded or cubed cheddar or monterey jack cheese (I left this out too)

Directions

  1. For the dressing, add all ingredients to measuring cup and use an immersion blender to mix up until smooth.
  2. Build the bowls with a base of romaine lettuce and add all the other components on top. Drizzle with dressing and extra sprinkle of cilantro.