Easy Buffalo Chicken Salad with Spicy Ranch Dressing

show me the recipe!! print the recipe!!

I LOVE buffalo anything. It’s actually my all-time favorite food. Buffalo wings, buffalo sauce on fries, buffalo air-fried cauliflower, or anything else I can put Frank’s Red Hot on.

So, I created this perfect salad. It’s spicy, the dressing is creamy, it’s full of micronutrients and healthy fats, and its addictive. I guarantee after making it once, you’ll make it again and again. It’s super easy, too. From start to finish (if you have the chicken pre-cooked) I would guess it takes about 10 minutes or less to make the salad, making it the perfect lunch to whip up super quick when you’re hungry and ready to eat!

We start by gathering the ingredients:

You can clearly see from this image that I was, infact, all out of avocados when I made this. I am social distancing, we haven’t been to the store, and our grocery delivery wasn’t due to come for a few days. If it WAS here, I would have cubed it and put it in the bowl with the carrots, celery, and cucumber.

For the chicken, I pre-cooked it. I grilled it according to the recipe, marinated in buffalo sauce. Then, just to REALLY feed my buffalo addiction, I tossed the chicken in extra buffalo sauce.

Then, when it comes to making the dressing, you can totally add more Frank’s Red Hot Original than I did. I added 2 tbsp to 1/8 cup of buttermilk ranch, but you can add more or less, depending on your spice tolerance. Likewise, if you don’t LOVE spicy flavors as much as I do, you can totally just use ranch dressing, just use 1/8 cup + 2 tbsp so it’s the same amount of dressing.

Add the ingredient to the bowl, and stir until combined. The dressing will end up being more runny than classic ranch, because of the addition of the really thin Frank’s Red Hot Original.

And now, onto the tortilla chips. My personal opinion: the tortilla chips MAKE the salad. Without them, the salad would miss that crunchy, salty, classically-paired-with-buffalo type deal. Now of course, you can use whatever chips you choose… grain free, Tostitos, blue corn, even lime flavored!

When it comes to assembling the salad, I add the lettuce first, by dividing it into 2 large bowls

Then, add the cucumber

Celery,

Carrots,

After this, I would have added the avocado (if I had any 🙁 which I didn’t.) Then, add the chicken on top of all the vegetables.

Drizzle on the dressing…

Add the chips on top, and you’re done! Enjoy!

As always, before any recipe… here are my tips!

1. Adjust anything to your spice level. If you don’t want the extra spice, I would recommend NOT adding the extra buffalo sauce to the chicken before adding it to the salad. It IS marinated in Frank’s Buffalo, so the flavor is already there. I only like the extra because of, as I said earlier, my crazy buffalo addiction.
2. You can vary your dressing base. I like to use buttermilk ranch, or chipotle ranch (again, buffalo addiction), but if you are looking for something a little bit lower in calories, you can use plain greek yogurt and add salt and Frank’s Red Hot Original to that.
3. BE CAREFUL with the knives. I like to slice all of my vegetables really thin, especially the cucumber and carrots, but during the process, it can be easy for knife to slip (especially if they aren’t sharp) and cut your finger, which can be painful and dangerous. So, especially if you’re a kid, please be careful or get help from an adult!
4. If for any reason you’re against using tortilla chips, roasted salted chickpeas deliver the same kind of flavor and crunch, and they are healthier!

So, here’s the recipe! Enjoy, and have fun cooking (and eating)! I hope you love this salad as much as I do!!