Barbecue Chicken Salad with Black Bean & Corn Salsa

I got this recipe from iheartnaptime.com, my first time ever using a recipe from that site.  The website author touted it as “the best salad ever.”  When I first read it, I chuckled at the hyperbole…but only until I took my first bite.  Oh. My. Gosh!!!

 

 

It was so good I could not bring myself to leave the kitchen or even sit down until I ate the whole plate.  And then DS#2’s leftovers.  It was so good that, for the first time in a long time, I ate an entire meal without taking the time to first log it into my eTools tracker.  In fact, I typed up this post even before I logged it.  I would’ve posted it last night, that’s how enthusiastic I was about it, but my site admin feature was down—boo hiss!

 

 

Once I did eventually type the recipe into my eTools recipe builder this morning, I was quite surprised. I would’ve thought all that avocado, barbecue sauce, and ranch dressing would’ve made it really points-heavy.  But, hey, there are vegetables in this thing, too! 😉 Good vegetables, as a matter of fact, like black beans, tomatoes, and (in my case) spinach.  All in all, it was quite a culinary jackpot, so much so that I wanted to post it immediately.

Make this salad–you will thank me!!

 

 

Barbecue Chicken Salad with Black Bean & Corn Salsa

Recipe from iheartnaptime.com

 

 

4 chicken breasts
¼ cup water
1 cup BBQ sauce (I used Sweet Baby Ray’s)*
1 recipe black bean salsa (see below)
5 cups lettuce/ spinach
1 ¼ cup ranch dressing**
½ cup cilantro
1 juiced lime
1 small tomatillo (I used a roma tomato)
1 c. tortilla strips

 

  1. Place chicken breast with water in crock pot over low heat. Pour BBQ sauce over the chicken. If I have onions on hand, I will put a few slices on top of the chicken. Cook chicken for 6 hours or until it shreds easily. Shred chicken.
  2. For the dressing: Combine ranch dressing, cilantro, lime and tomatillo in a blender. If you like it spicy, you could throw half a jalapeno in there. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
  3. Place desired amount of lettuce on your plate. Then add a few spoonfuls of chicken and black bean salsa. Pour on dressing and top with tortilla strips.

 

*Now, this is where I deviated a bit, and screwed up a bit.  First of all, I decided that I would use less barbecue sauce, because I’m actually not a huge fan of it.  I used 1 cup instead of the 1.5 that was called for.  I still used the same amount of water though, and that may have been my first mistake.  My second mistake was in definitely cooking it longer than stated in the directions.  It says six hours, but I have a long workday, and this was in the crockpot more like 10 hours. Oops.  🙁  So yes, parts of it were quite charred when I got home, but I was able to pick out the burned parts.  Next time, I will increase the water and try to cook it a shorter period. It’s hard, though, because my work day is 8 hours and my commute is about an hour each way. 🙁 I’ll let you know if I can get it to work without charring next time.

**The original recipe calls for 1.5, but I used less because I didn’t have that much!

 

 

Corn and Black Bean Salsa

This was a new one for me—I’ve never tried to make this before, but after trying it, I’m struggling as to why! It’s delicious!

1 can of sweet corn (drained)
1 can of black beans (rinsed and drained)
3 tomatoes
1 red pepper
2 avacados from Mexico (I have no idea if mine were from Mexico or not!)
2 limes (I ran out of limes, so I used one lime and 1 tbsp of bottled lime juice)
¼ cup onion
½ tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
3/4 cup cilantro (I ran out of fresh so I used about 1.5 tbsp of dried)

 

Combine the corn and beans into a medium sized bowl. Dice the onion, pepper, avocados and tomatoes then mix them in the bowl. Cut the cilantro and mix that in with the salt and sugar. Squeeze fresh lime juice over the top. Stir and enjoy with tortilla chips or wheat thins.

 

    PointsPlus Values:

Salad – 6 points when divided into 6 servings
Dressing – 4 points when divided into 12 servings (that’s about two tablespoons, which is plenty in my opinion)
Salsa – 2 points when divided into 16 1/2 cup servings (I actually measured the salsa when I was done, and it came out to 8 cups)

 

Thanks for reading!

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