I am SO excited to be sharing this recipe for GF Grilled Citrus Chicken Salad with you! It’s one of my favorite lunches, dinners, or just overall summer meals. This dish is bright and colorful, delicious, and SO healthy! It’s light on carbs and high in vegetables, micro-nutrients, and protein. Overall, it’s a perfect, naturally gluten free summer or spring meal. It’s also easy to make!
Before we get into the directions and photos, I want to give some notes!
First of all, preparing the coconut lime rice: If you have never made coconut lime rice, it’s actually really easy and simple! All you have to do is prepare rice the way you normally would, but add the zest of one lime, and one can of coconut milk. If you still need more liquid for the amount of rice you’re making, add water!
Next, notes on grilled citrus. I personally think it adds a great depth to the dish, however, grilled limes especially can be really bitter. If you aren’t into that type of flavor, you can omit the limes and just grill oranges and lemons. But, if you’re feeling up to trying something new, I highly recommend adding the all the types of grilled citrus to your salad.
Finally, the honey syrup. I like to use this instead of just plain honey because it is so much thinner and blends into the marinate better than honey does. It’s just 1 part honey and 1 part water, heated up and mixed until one homogenous mixture.
Making the Marinade
The chicken marinade has very few ingredients, which makes it the perfect component of this recipe to make ahead of time. Plus, it can sit for a while. Infact, the longer the chicken sits in the fridge in the marinade, the more flavorful it will be! The steps are simple too.
Start by adding the citrus to the bottom of the pan with a drizzle of olive oil, then smash the citrus with a few jalapeno slices to release some of the juices.
Mix the rest of the marinade ingredients together and pour over the smashed citrus. Add the chicken breasts, cover with the rest of the citrus, cover in cling wrap, and sit in the fridge!
You can let it sit for as short as 45 minutes, or up to a few hours! The longer it sits, the more citrus infused the chicken will be!
Grilling the Chicken:
When I grill the chicken for this recipe, I also grill the citrus slices from the marinade. It kills the bacteria from the raw chicken, and it makes a great component to the salad that not only makes it seem fancier, but actually tastes amazing too! They can be bitter, especially the limes, but overall I LOVE adding grilled citrus to this salad.
Grilling the chicken is pretty simple! Just grill it at medium high heat until 165 degrees internally!
The dressing and the salad:
This is my foolproof way to create a thicker salad dressing: use a tupperware-type sealable container! It’s SO easy and takes almost no time. You don’t have to go crazy whisking to emulsify the oil, or dirty a blender or anything! It uses only a few dishes and the end result is exactly the same: delicious.
Add the ingredients to a sealable container and shake for about a minute until emulsified!
Next part is the salad! This part is pretty customizable, you really can add anything or omit anything you want!
Creating the salads!
This is my favorite part! It’s true that we eat with our eyes first, so creating a beautiful salad is half the battle! Because of the bright colors, this dish actually is delicious both to the eyes, and the taste buds. 🙂
I start with the lettuce, rice, and cucumbers.
Then, I add the citrus, red onion, and fanned avocado slices.
Then I top with chicken, grilled citrus, and drizzle with the homemade dressing!
Then you’re finished – Enjoy this wonderful GF Grilled Citrus and Chicken Salad
Happy cooking people! I hope you love this recipe as much as I do!
Grilled Citrus Chicken Salads
Ingredients
For the Chicken
- 4 large chicken breasts
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1/4 cup honey syrup (1 part honey to 1 part water)
- 1 large jalapeno (thinly sliced, seeds removed)
- 2 tsp salt
- 1 large orange (thinly sliced)
- 1 large lime (thinly sliced)
- 1 large lemon (thinly sliced)
For the Salad
- 2 cups coconut lime rice (see blog notes)
- 3 heads romaine lettuce (thinly sliced)
- 1 large avocado (sliced)
- 1/4 of a red onion, diced
- 2 mini cucumbers (thinly sliced)
- 3 cara cara or navel oranges, segmented
For the Salad Dressing
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1/4 cup orange juice
- 2 tbsp honey
- 1 tsp salt
Instructions
Marinade the Chicken
- First, slice the citrus fruits and set them aside. In a medium sized bowl, add the honey syrup, olive oil, and salt.
- In a large glass casserole dish, lay some citrus slices down and drizzle with extra olive oil. Add a few jalapeno slices, and using the end of a wooden spoon, smash the citrus and jalapeno slices until they have released some of their flavor and there is a little bit of juice in the bottom on the dish.
- Now, pour the olive oil and honey syrup mixture on top of the smashed fruit. Lay the chicken breasts in the liquid and cover them in the rest of the citrus slices and jalapeno slices. Cover with cling wrap and let sit in the fridge for 45+ minutes.
Prep the salad ingredients
- Cut up your cucumbers, lettuce, avocado, and red onion. Segment your oranges by cutting them vertically, carving away the peel and the pith from the actual citrus with a knife, and the carefully slicing away the membrane to leave you with the segmented slices.
- If you don't know how to make coconut lime rice, it's actually really simple! Just make rice as you normally would, add the zest of 1 lime and 1 can of coconut milk. If that's not enough liquid for the rice, add the rest in water.
- If you want the rice to have more of a lime flavor, add the juice of a lime too.
Make the Salad Dressing
- Combine all of the ingredients into a small tupperware type covered container and shake vigorously for about 1 minute. This is an easy way to emulsify the oil and create a thicker dressing.
Grill the Chicken and Citrus
- Heat up your grill to medium heat. Once it's preheated, add your chicken and cook for about 5-7 minutes on each side. Once you lay your chicken down on the grill the first time, don't move it! This will help create the nice grill marks you can see in the photo.
- Once you flip the chicken, add the intact citrus slices to the grill and cook for 2-3 minutes on each side until grill marks are visible.
- Remove the chicken from the grill once the internal temperature is 165 degrees.
- Let rest for 10 minutes
Make the Salads
- Fill your bowls with romaine, and add rice the rice and cucumber. Then, add the citrus slices and red onions.
- Slice the chicken. Add it to the top of the salad with the fanned out avocado slices. Add a few pieces of grilled citrus to each bowl and drizzle salad dressing on top.
- Serve and enjoy this delicious Grilled Citrus Chicken Salad.