Chopped Salad with Buffalo Chicken

We love this Chopped Buffalo Chicken Salad! It’s packed with flavor and tons of crunchy ingredients, and you can make it ahead of time for weekday lunches. Drizzle with a homemade ranch, then you’re good to go!

My love for chopped salads knows no bounds!

Chopped salads are the best salads in my opinion. You get a bite of everything, they are so incredibly CRISPY and it’s usually the gateway for people who love salads. Like me! I started with chopped salads and it was key. That’s how I learned to love salad.

This Chopped Buffalo Chicken Salad is amazing. Juicy grilled chicken mixed with all the delicious ingredients you associate with classic buffalo chicken flavor. Chopped carrot, chopped celery, chopped romaine, chopped cucumber, chopped green onion, cilantro, chives and crumbled blue cheese.

Full disclosure: I always pick the celery from my own portion. You know I can’t figure it out.

In addition to all these wonderful flavors, I make my homemade yogurt ranch drizzle over it. Sometimes I make a spritz of wing sauce and ranch separately. Sometimes I mix a few tablespoons of wing sauce right into mine ranch, prepare a buffalo ranch dressing. Both work, both are delicious, and this chopped salad will amaze everyone.

The texture is outstanding.

The taste is so wonderful, it’s almost like not eating a salad. It definitely feels more like a “bowl” meal and I mean, that’s maybe half the battle when you want to eat a salad. If it looks and tastes like lettuce, it becomes less appealing almost immediately. But when it looks more like a bowl meal and you get a crunchy bite of flavor in every fork, it’s automatically a great meal.

One you crave!

When I say that we long for it, maybe that’s an understatement. It’s full of our favorite flavors and it’s so easy. Mostly because you can prepare some of these ingredients ahead of time and store them in the fridge.

I will chop the carrots and celery and store them together. Then I will also chop the cucumbers. I also chop the cilantro, chives, and scallions and keep those together too. And of course the chicken can be grilled in advance. And the ranch? Well, let’s just say that I almost always have it in my fridge.

The only thing I do right before serving is cut up my salad. I find that it is the freshest and also stays very crisp. Which for me is the key to loving it.

All of these ingredients make a wonderful weeknight lunch. One where you want a lot of flavor, a meal that fills you up incredibly and can usually be made for anyone. It’s very easy to omit the “x” ingredient if someone doesn’t like it.

I also find this method to be a great way to get my kids to eat veggies. Now I can skip the lettuce (although Max loves lettuce and will eat even a plain bowl of it) and just do it all together. I don’t necessarily make it buffalo wing flavored because of the spices, but I make it with BBQ sauce or even my house sauce and they love it. They also take out and dip each piece!

The following recipe makes a large serving of salad for four, but you can easily cut it in half. And of course it’s not really a RECIPE – it’s more of a method. Add as much of an ingredient as you like and remove the ones you don’t like. Use as much dressing as you like and so on. Make it your own.

Oh, and for the record, our favorite wing sauce is Frank’s Red Hot Buffalo Wing. The buffalo wing version is key!

See? Can’t go wrong.

This is on the menu this week!!

Chopped Salad with Buffalo Chicken

Hacked is the only way to go.