Crunchy Asian Chicken Salad with Roasted Pineapple

2021-10-06

A nutritious and gluten-free salad recipe made with veggies, cashew crusted chicken bites, toasted noodles and pineapple. This Crunchy Asian Chicken Salad is the ultimate asian-inspired salad recipe for a healthy weeknight dinner or lunch on-the-go.

Just like last year, this summer is full of travel! From local cottage country escapes to US adventures, I can hardly sit still just thinking about it. Actually, I guess my restlessness is what causes my insane travel schedule? And then I get stressed out from it.

I can’t win.

So far this summer I have 3 trips planned. One to NYC, one to Boston and one to SF. I’m in the US so often, you’d think I was a US citizen…oh wait, I am. But for real, I’m travelling so frequently around North America that it’s hard to say where my home base really is.

One of the places I’m most excited to visit this summer is NYC, mainly because at one point in my life I used to call it my home-base. When I moved away from NYC, I left my besties, sirens at all hours of the day and night and some of my favourite meals of all time.

When you have every type of food available for you all the time, you take for granted how good you have it. Seamless is the greatest invention of all time and I think I went into genuine withdrawal when I moved back to Toronto. The pace and accessibility of life in Manhattan is a hard thing to shake when you don’t have it anymore.

One of my favourite (seamlessly ordered) meals was the Crunchy Asian Salad from Spring Street Natural in SoHo. I’ve subsequently discovered they have removed it from the menu, which means my annual visit to NYC has been stripped of its salad privileges and I may or may not have cried a little bit.

This has left me with only one option. It was time I take matters into my own hands and FINALLY recreate the salad at home. It only took me 3 years but I can confidently say I have done the impossible and now my beloved crunchy asian chicken salad is mine everyday of the week.

To be honest, I’ve kind of entered dangerous territory. Suddenly seamless isn’t so seamless anymore, and I’ve started to operate my own little delivery service straight from my kitchen to my mouth.

I no longer need to pick up the phone to have my meals delivered, let alone travel to another country to relive my salad glory days. It’s looking to be a summer full of travel and Crunchy Asian Chicken Salad.

A good summer indeed.

Crunchy Asian Chicken Salad with Roasted Pineapple

Total Time: 40 minutes
Yield: 2-4 1x

Scale

Ingredients

For the Salad:

1 batch of Cashew Crusted Chicken Fingers, chopped into bite-sized pieces
2 heads of romaine lettuce, chopped
2 cups of broccoli slaw
3 green onions (whites and light green only), chopped
1/4 cup slivered almonds
1 bunch (about 1 cup) rice noodles, broken up into bite-sized pieces*
5 sticks pineapple

For the Dressing:

3 T olive oil
1 1/2 T honey
2 T rice wine vinegar
1 1/2 tsp freshly grated ginger
1 1/2 T tamari (or soy sauce if not gluten-free)
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp sriracha sauce (or other hot sauce)
1/2 tsp sesame oil
juice, 1 lime
pinch of salt and pepper

For the Salad:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
Spread out almonds and rice noodles on a baking sheet.
Bake for 5 minutes. Remove and set aside.
Turn oven up to broil.
Add pineapple to baking sheet.
Broil for 3-4 minutes. Watch carefully to ensure it doesn’t burn.
Once cooled, chop into bite-sized pieces.
In a large bowl combine chicken, lettuce, broccoli slaw, onions, almonds, rice noodles and pineapple.