Chipotle Chicken Salad with Quinoa & Lime Crème Fraîche

This chipotle chicken salad is a simple healthy dinner with roasted tomatoes, quinoa, chorizo and baby spinach. It's the best chicken salad recipe!

Quinoa is an ingredient that I only use every now and then. It's not my favourite grain but sometimes it just works perfectly. I also find it surprisingly filling which is always a winner in my book.

I love using quinoa in salads, especially this sweet potato & quinoa salad, and now this chipotle chicken version too.

How's it going team? It's Sunday and we've spent the day being extremely lazy after our bottomless taco and margarita day yesterday.

I'm feeling surprisingly fine but Will is very hungover.

We had a really good day yesterday but we ate so many tacos. Obviously that sounds like a good thing but turns out there's such a thing as too many tacos.

I know, who knew? We were so full after eating and ended up leaving a few tacos 😰

Anyway after indulging in A LOT of tacos and margaritas yesterday we definitely need some healthy comfort food like this chipotle chicken salad with quinoa.

It's spicy, it's filling and it's got that amazing creamy dressing on top.

There's so many different elements to it and they all work so well together.

Why we love this chipotle chicken salad:

• It's healthy thanks to loads of good for you ingredients including spinach, tomatoes, quinoa and spring onions
• It's full of flavour from the super sweet roasted tomatoes, the zingy and creamy dressing and the spicy chicken thighs
• It's naturally gluten free because we're using quinoa as the central grain so it's perfect for anyone avoiding gluten (but also great for everyone else too!)
• This salad is filling enough to act as a main dish which makes it great for a summer evening
• Finally, this salad is so easy to make your own! Not feeling the chicken? Switch out for haloumi or tofu. Got some other vegetables that need using up? Throw them in there - avocado or peppers would be delicious 

INGREDIENTS YOU NEED TO MAKE CHIPOTLE CHICKEN SALAD WITH QUINOA:

• Olive Oil
• Cumin
• Sugar
• Cherry Tomatoes
• Crème fraîche
• Lime
• Chicken Thighs - I used bone in skin on. The skin gets all crispy and the meat stays juicy. However, you can use chicken breasts if you prefer. Try out these bbq baked chicken thighs for another way to use this cut!
• Chipotle Paste
• Baby Spinach
• Spring Onions (Scallions)
• Mint Leaves
• Quinoa
• Chorizo

Keep scrolling to get the full recipe for this chipotle chicken salad with quinoa...

How To Make Chipotle Chicken Salad?

So you start off by roasting your tomatoes and chicken thighs. The tomato halves are coated in olive oil and sprinkled with cumin and sugar before roasting until they're insanely sweet and juicy.

Is there anything better than a super sweet roasted tomato? It could eat them all up right there and then plus with a little bread to soak up all those roasting juices, amazing.

The thing I love about using roasted tomatoes in this salad is that the roasting juices get tossed in with all the other ingredients and act as a dressing along with lime crème fraîche.

The chicken thighs are tossed in a mixture of chipotle chilli paste, olive oil and lime juice then roasted so that the skin is crispy and full of spicy flavour.

Once you've got your chicken and tomatoes in the oven then you just need to put together the rest of the salad.

For the lime dressing you simply need to mix the juice and zest of a lime with crème fraîche and set aside until ready to use.

For the rest of this easy chicken salad I used a handful of baby spinach leaves, some finely sliced spring onions (scallions), quinoa, chorizo and some fresh mint leaves.

The mint leaves are probably my favourite ingredient we've got going on here. Mint is one of my favourite herbs and it adds so much to this salad. I love it.

Then simply toss everything together and top with a roast chicken thigh and plenty of dressing.

Want more? Try these other salad recipes!

• Balsamic Steak and Apple Salad
• Butternut Squash Salad with Wild Rice
• Moroccan Couscous Chickpea Salad
• Winter Broccoli & Wild Rice Salad
• Chopped Tuscan Salad
• Halloumi Salad with Kale & Tahini Dressing

Recipe

Like the look of this recipe? Make sure you pin it for later!