Southwestern Chopped Chicken Salad

Well long time no see to all of my followers!  I hope your summer has been going well with all of you and you have not all dried up either!  What a summer this has been, huh!?

Well, if any of you are like me, you like to snoop cruise around on Pinterest and find new and great things to pin to your boards.  I found this recipe last week on one of my friends boards and decided to give it a try and I'm glad that I did too!  I found the original post HERE.  The morning I decided that I was going to make this, my chicken breast were still in the freezer, rock hard.  So I ran some warm water over them to break them apart and then put them in my crock-pot with just enough water to cover the bottom, set it on HIGH and let them cook until I got home from work around 12:15 (total of four hours).  Oh the house smelled sooo good too!  Than I got busy and started chopping all of the salad ingredients for this recipe.  Oh, I removed the cooked breast from the crock-pot so that they could start cooling. 

Oh see how I did my avocado?  First I made all of these cut lines while it was still inside the skin.

 Then I took a spoon and scoped out the already diced pieces, easy peasy!!

Here is a picture of the dressing.  Very thick.



Here is a picture of the salad before everything is put together, looks yummy, doesn't it!

Here is a picture of the salad all put together, yummm!!

Now a few small details about this salad, do not mix it together until you are ready to eat, otherwise it will get soggy.  My daughter and I had some the next day and it was still very good, but that was about as long as you could make it last.  I would also use a small head of lettuce, which was not stated in the original recipe.  I also served my chips whole and on the side, one less thing to go soggy. 

Would I make this again, I sure would, it was very good but I would make sure to have less lettuce and a few more people for supper.  I'm wondering if one could buy the ready made Ranch dressing and just measure out 1 1/2 cups and add taco seasoning to it and then just drizzle some of the dressing on the already tossed salad on individual plates, that way it shouldn't get soggy if you could not eat it all at one sitting.  What do you think?

Southwestern Chopped Chicken Salad

Salad:

2 cups shredded chicken

1 small to medium green pepper, diced

1 can (15 oz) black beans, drained and rinsed

1 can (15 oz) corn, drained  OR 1 cup frozen corn, thawed

2 Roma tomatoes, diced

4 green onions, sliced

1 small head iceberg lettuce, washed and chopped

1/4 cup cilantro, chopped

2 ripe avocados, diced

1 cup crushed tortilla chips

Dressing:

1/2 cup mayonnaise

2/3 cup Greek yogurt or sour cream

1 Tablespoon dry ranch dressing

1 Tablespoon taco seasoning

In a large bowl, combine all the salad ingredients together, tossing,except dressing and tortilla chips.

In a small bowl, stir all the dressing ingredients together.  Stir to combine. 

Add half of the dressing to the salad, tossing to combine.  Gradually add more dressing until it is to your liking.  Top with tortilla chips.

Serves 4 for dinner salad

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Well there you have it, a really nice, healthy dinner!       Mary