This is a recipe for a restaurant-quality, Asian-inspired salad with optional chicken. The dressing has a surprise ingredient: peanut butter.
Asian-Inspired Salad
1
cup, roughly20
minutes5
minutes25
minutesThis recipe keeps well and is easy to double.
Ingredients
- For the dressing
1/4 cup safflower oil
3 Tbs rice vinegar
2 Tbs soy sauce
1 Tbs honey
2 tsp Asian Ginger Spice Paste
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp peanut butter
- For the salad
Cooked chicken, sliced into bite-size-ish pieces (optional)
1 seedless cucumber (peeled and) cut into thin half-moons
1 bunch of radishes, sliced paper thin
2 carrots, peeled and cut into in matchsticks
1 red bell pepper, seeds and stem removed, cut into matchsticks
1/4 of a purple cabbage, shredded into thin ribbons
2 heads of romaine, sliced into thin ribbons
A very small handful of fresh cilantro leaves
Sliced almonds (optional)
Wonton strips
Sesame seeds as a garnish (optional)
Directions
- For the dressing: place all ingredients into a tightly sealable jar and shake hard until the dressing becomes smooth and thick. Taste it on a leaf of lettuce. If it’s too sharp, add a tiny splash of oil or honey. It if needs more punch, add a small dollop of the paste. Keeps well refrigerated for up to 1 week. Shake before using.
- For the salad: pour some dressing into the bottom of a large mixing bowl. Eyeball the measurement; with experience, you’ll get good at this. Swirl the bowl so that the dressing coats most of the inside. Add all the salad ingredients to the bowl, in order, and toss with clean hands, two large salad spoons, or a gently with a large, flexible spatula. (As an alternative, hold back the wontons and use them as a garnish instead.)
Notes
- Substitutions: another neutral oil, like canola or grapeseed, for the safflower; maple syrup for the honey
If you love the Asian Chicken Salad at Panera, this one … I’m not going to call it a copy-cat, because this one’s better!
Restaurant-Quality:
This dressing is restaurant-quality, for sure. It’s amazingly flavorful. It’s got punch and zest and a ton of wow factor. So, put it on fresh, beautiful vegetables, and you’ve got a salad that you’d be happy with if it were served to you in a restaurant.
Ingredients:
- Yes, the peanut butter in the dressing is quite a surprise, but trust me on it.
- The chicken can be warm or cold, but warm seems like an upgrade. Any preparation is fine, although I prefer pan-fried and oven-finished. The salad doesn’t need the chicken in order to seem complete or satisfying, but it’s an obvious, popular choice for this type of salad, especially if you want to feel like it’s a main course salad.
- You should vary the amount of salad ingredients to taste. For instance, an entire bunch of radishes might be a lot for some people. Not for me. I love it. But of coarse, it would depend on how peppery they are.
Prep:
- If the spice paste is chunkier than you’d prefer for this context, feel free to process it to a smooth paste. In that case, you might just make this dressing in the processor instead of shaking it. I find that the processor gives you a different texture – good, but different – and that processed dressing often holds onto it emulsification longer. But I like the simplicity, straightforwardness, and less cleanup of shaking.
- How much dressing to use is a matter of taste, obviously. I like two tablespoons per three cups of salad. I think that’s not too light, not too heavy. Then, I’ll go a bit heavier if I’m in the mood.
- You can prep the greens in advance, but not the day before. They’re fine the next day – I’d happily eat them – but they’re not as fresh as they were. They’re best within a few hours, or same-day. The whole world doesn’t necessarily agree with me on this.
Leftovers:
As with all green salads, this one’s best if dressed right before serving. If you think you’ll have leftovers, dress only as much as you think you’ll eat, and store the rest of the greens and dressing separately. If the tossed, undressed greens are going to be in the fridge overnight, I like to put a folded paper towel at the bottom of the bowl to soak up any excess moisture.
Servings:
You can get six dinner-sized servings from this salad, and there’s just about exactly enough dressing for them.
Social Learning:
I happen to have stumbled onto some stackable Ball jars. At Blain’s Farm and Fleet. Yes, I live near one of those now. A far cry from when I lived near the Green Mill jazz club in my sweet home, Chicago. But I digress. These stackable Ball jars, you can buy sippy-cup lids for them, which is fantastic! I happen to love dirty-ice cocktails, so I shake a cocktail in one with the sippy-cup lid sealed on tight and closed, and then drink the cocktail right from the jar! I also make dressing in them, and then pour the dressing from them via the sippy-cup spout!
I bought a bunch of them, one- and two-cup sizes. And since they stack, they fit so easily in my cupboard! Do I sound like a commercial? This is not a commercial. It’s just that I love those jars. Anyway, I also love that they’re glass. I like to use glass for fridge storage, because of microplastics. Except one day, they will probably tell us we’re been consuming microglass. At that point, fuckit.
Asian-Inspired Salad
Credit for images on this page: Make It Like a Man! This content was not solicited by anyone, nor was it written in exchange for anything. Thank you, Kesor. Thank you, ⌘+C. Make It Like a Man! is ranked by Feedspot as #2 in the Top 30 Men’s Cooking Blogs.
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