Serve it in bowls or stuff it inside lettuce wraps for a very satisfying Thai-inspired meal! The flavors and textures of this salad are magnificent. Crunchy cabbage, fresh-flavored scallions and aromatic cilantro combine with shredded chicken to create a tasty base that’s further enhanced by the dressing - a wonderful combination of creamy peanut butter, salty soy sauce, and spicy red curry paste. This Thai chicken salad is incredibly good and has quickly become one of my family’s favorite main-dish salads. I especially like to make it the day before I anticipate being too busy to cook. Needless to say, it’s the perfect meal-prep dish.
Ingredients
You’ll need ten ingredients to make this tasty salad. The exact measurements are included in the recipe card below. Here’s an overview of what you’ll need: For the dressing: Creamy peanut butter plus water to thin it out, soy sauce, rice vinegar, Thai red curry paste, garlic, and ginger. Chicken: I use shredded cooked chicken breasts. For the ultimate ease, you can use shredded rotisserie chicken, leaving the skin out. Coleslaw mix: Rather than shred vegetables (green cabbage, red cabbage, and carrots) by myself, I find it easier to use a bagged coleslaw mix. Green onions: I use the green parts only, and I slice them thinly. Cilantro: It adds so much flavor to this salad! In some recipes, you can substitute it with parsley, but in this one, I don’t recommend it.
Instructions
Making this Thai chicken salad is easy! Scroll down to the recipe card for detailed instructions. Here are the basic steps: You start by mixing up the dressing. I mix it right in the salad bowl. First, you mix together the peanut butter with water, soy sauce, and vinegar. It takes a few minutes to reach a smooth consistency, so keep whisking! Then you add the curry paste, garlic, and ginger, and whisk them in. Now add your salad ingredients - shredded chicken, coleslaw, scallions, and cilantro - to the same salad bowl, mixing after each addition. Mix everything well, until all the ingredients are well-coated in the tasty dressing.
Expert tip
While you can serve the salad immediately, I do recommend covering it and refrigerating it for an hour or so to allow the flavors to meld. Mix it one more time before serving.
Frequently asked questions
Variations
I LOVE this salad and I adore the peanut dressing. So I rarely make any changes to it. But if you’d like to try, a few possible variations include:
Use boiled and cooled shrimp instead of chicken.Replace the green onions with chives or diced shallots.Use tahini paste (sesame seed paste) instead of peanut butter and add a tablespoon of sesame oil to the dressing.
Serving suggestions
This is a main-dish salad and it’s a full meal that includes meat and veggies, so you can simply serve it as is on a plate, and that’s what I normally do. You can also serve it in a lettuce wrap or on top of shredded lettuce or baby spinach leaves. If you eat bread, you can stuff it inside tortillas, creating a very tasty and filling wrap.
Storing leftovers
That’s the beauty of this salad - you SHOULD make it ahead of time, and it keeps well in the fridge, in an airtight container, for 3-4 days. Just remember that if you’ve used leftover chicken to make it, you should count those 4 days from the day the chicken was cooked.
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