Mediterranean Kale Quinoa Salad with Chicken.
I have one heck of a flavor explosion for you today – my favorite Mediterranean kale salad!
Okay, this is embarrassing.
It’s ANOTHER recipe I’ve been making at home that is totally inspired by Panera. I know! It’s like I’m living ten years ago with all of these Panera salads.
(p.s. this strawberry poppyseed salad will be in full effect in spring!)
But this one is just soooo wonderful. I actually find myself craving it. There is crunch and flavor and texture and it doesn’t make me feel like I’m eating a sad lunch salad.
Plus, it makes me feel GOOD. Lots of great stuff in here for us.
It’s true!
Back in the fall, we started ordering the modern greek quinoa salad at Panera. I somehow realized (or someone told me?!) that you could add smoked pulled chicken to the salad and it was the best day ever. Made the salad about 150 times better.
As a side bar, any time I get a salad at Panera now, I order the smoked pulled chicken. Try it! You won’t regret it.
For this Mediterranean kale salad, I became a total cheater and used a rotisserie chicken. I love the ones from Whole Foods and they make dinner so easy in a pinch.
It’s not smoked, but we do have a smoker and I’m not opposed to smoking chicken for said salad. They are a quick meat to smoke anyway, so it may be in the cards soon. The kicker is that I love shredded chicken in a salad! If you’re short on time, rotisserie is the way to go.
Do it!
The Panera version of this salad has a tomato sofrito blend, but I couldn’t exactly figure that out. It seems like a sticky mixture of tomatoes and quinoa, albeit still delicious. And the sofrito just didn’t seem to… mesh… with the Mediterranean salad flavors I was going for.
So my solution was to make a batch of quinoa and throw it in.
Um yes so easy!
It’s simple, but it adds a lot to the salad in terms of texture and satiety.
And the quinoa does double duty. I suggest making a batch and using the leftovers for things like breakfast quinoa and burrito bowls. It’s ready to go!
The comes all the flavor. In addition to the chicken and quinoa, we have cherry tomatoes. Roasted red peppers. Kalamata olives. Sliced cucumber. Finally, tons of feta.
But! My favorite part of this salad is nothing spectacular. It’s those crunchy sliced almonds. They are something I’d never think to put on this salad combination myself.
And of course, I used the honey roasted ones which make it even better. So much crunch. Not to mention deliciousness.
Pretty sure this has everything I want in each bite.
Mediterranean Kale Salad
Mediterranean Kale Salad
Ingredients
- 4 cups curly green kale, shredded with a knife
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon freshly cracked pepper
- 1 ½ cups cooked, shredded chicken
- 1/2 cup cooked quinoa (I love the tricolor quinoa from Trader Joes!)
- 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
- ½ cup diced roasted red peppers
- ½ cup thinly sliced cucumber
- 1/3 cup chopped Kalamata olives
- ¼ cup sliced almonds
- ¼ cup crumbled feta cheese
- 2 tablespoons diced shallot
- lemon wedges, for spritzing
lemon vinaigrette
- 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
- 3 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1 1/2 tablespoons honey
- 2 garlic cloves, finely minced or pressed
- 1/2 teaspoon dill weed
- 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
Instructions
- If needed, cook your quinoa according to package directions. It should on take 15 minutes!
- Place the kale in a bowl and massage the leaves with 1 teaspoon of olive oil. Set it aside for 10 minutes. I usually chop up the vegetables while I want! After 1 minutes, season it with salt and pepper and toss once more.
- To assemble the salad, add the chicken and quinoa into the bowl of the kale and toss again. Add on the tomatoes, peppers, cucumber, olives, almonds, feta and shallot. Drizzle on some of the dressing and toss. Serve with additional dressing and a lemon wedge.
lemon vinaigrette
- In a bowl, whisk together the vinegar, lemon juice, honey, garlic, dill, oregano, salt and pepper. Continue to whisk while streaming in the olive oil. This dressing stays great in the fridge in a sealed container for a week or so, so feel free to make a double batch if desired!
Did you make this recipe?
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I appreciate you so much!
Majorly crave-worthy.
40 Comments on “Mediterranean Kale Quinoa Salad with Chicken.”
Even though it’s NEGATIVE 1°F here today, this cooling salad still looks appetizing. Crave-worthy, for sure.
i knoooow so cold!!!
Tried it for the first time at Panera.Im gonna try to prepare it for my wife this coming week following your instructions. Thanks
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How much quinoa would you cook? Nothing was listed in the recipe. This looks amazing.
sorry maryann! it’s 1/2 cup. :) thank you!
I love this salad from Panera!! It’s the only thing I order there (no chicken tho cause I’m a vegetarian). I’ve always wanted to make it myself and now I have to! Love it!
isn’t it so good?! so glad someone else loves it too!
Oh my goodness, this looks like texture heaven! So excited to give it a try!
thank you ashlyn!!
Oh my goodness, this looks incredible! I’m in love with Mediterranean food! I’m excited to try it!
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Delicious! The idea of smoked chicken on there even more so! You have a smoker 😁? I would love to see some smoker recipes on your site in the future! I, for one, could use some help in that area!
thanks mia!
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You nailed it! This is one of my favorite salads at Panera and I made your recipe tonight — and it was a hit! Love the use of kale and all the other textures and tastes (and the almonds really add a great crunch).
so glad you liked it! thank you!
Yum! This is really delicious!
thanks rina!
I made this last night for the Super Bowl!! I will be making this salad over and over again!! In fact, I’m running to the store right now – in a Wyoming Winter Snow Storm – just to get some more curly leaf kale to make another big bowl to get me through the week!! Thanks SO much for a DELICIOUS and filling salad.
so glad you liked it!!!
I made this for dinner last night and it was SO good! Thank you for doing all of the hard work of telling me me how to make a good salad! I love ordering salads at restaurants because they always do everything right (flavor, texture, protein, veggies, etc), but am a complete dud when making them at home. This is such a keeper! Thank you!
thank YOU!!! i’m so glad you liked it ashly!
Thank you for the new recipe. I am food lover
thank you!!
Omg! I made this for lunch yesterday and this was the best lunch I’ve had in SUCH a long time! And it’s a SALAD! Oh my gosh, I can’t wait to make this again! I used rotisserie chicken. I omitted the olives (not a fan) but otherwise kept true to the recipe! FIVE STAR!!!
This salad is a game changer for lunches. So many good flavors and textures and sources of protein to fill you up. Amazingggg
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Absolutely yummy! A definite keeper. Instead of putting shredded chicken in the salad, I marinated and barbecued some chicken thighs. Very tasty. Lovely mix of flavours and textures, and the dressing pulled it all together. Five stars!
Love the bright colors in this recipe
I am currently so obsessed with this salad! So many flavors that blend so well together :) This is a must try.
I recently had the Greek Salad at Panera Bread and automatically wondered how I could recreate it. Thank you for figuring it out for me!!!
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Delicious and super flavorful! We just made this for dinner and loved how easy it was to accommodate what we already had. We left out the cucumber, added artichokes and banana peppers, subbed baby kale for the curly and chopped pecans for the almonds. We’re having leftovers tomorrow and I’m already looking forward to them.
Hi! I noticed you used a lemon vinaigrette.. is that what Panera typically uses and that’s why you remade it? Or do they use the Greek? Thank you!
Being half Greek & half Italian, I was brought up on mostly a healthy Mediterranean diet. This is a superb salad, which is not only delicious, but super healthy. It can be changed up by using a different (I also like Farrow) grain, and I sometimes add a few sliced Figs.
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Delicious salad. My only complaint is unless the chicken and quinoa are already cooked, this takes more than 30 minutes to get everything made from scratch at once, at least for one person doing it all. And it is more like 4 servings, it makes a lot! But overall, tastes delicious!
Delish
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