If there’s a chopped salad on a restaurant menu, then you bet I’m going to be ordering it. I love a big bowl full of crunchy greens, veggies, and lean protein. It’s filling, nourishing, healthy, satisfying, and especially refreshing during the summer months. A few years back I thought it would be fun to recreate some of my favorite go-to restaurant-style meals…starting with this ridiculously good and crunchy chopped chicken cabbage salad.
This chicken cabbage salad gets its crunch from green cabbage (or you could also use red!), tons of fresh raw veggies, a hint of sweetness from corn, a kick from jalapeño, creaminess from avocado, and finally it’s all tossed together with a homemade spicy greek yogurt ranch.
I personally LOVE cabbage salads because they retain their delicious crunch for days, meaning that you’ll have leftovers that actually taste GOOD. SIGN ME UP!
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Chopped chicken cabbage salad ingredients
This healthy ranch chicken cabbage salad recipe is packing all of the goods and southwest flavors that make it taste like one of those big, delicious restaurant chopped salads (but without the price tag and weird ingredients!) Here’s what you’ll need:
- For the chicken marinade: we’re using a bit of olive oil, honey, fresh lime juice, chili powder, cumin, garlic powder, paprika, cayenne pepper, salt & pepper. It’s basically like a really yummy taco chicken marinade. If you want to make this vegetarian, feel free to skip the chicken and use a can of chickpeas instead.
- For the salad: load up on shredded green cabbage, green onion, cilantro, carrots, red bell pepper, jalapeño, fresh (or frozen) sweet corn, and roasted pepitas.
- For the spicy ranch dressing: protein-packed greek yogurt, garlic powder, onion powder, fresh lemon juice, dried dill (or chives), salt, a bit of water to thin, and your favorite hot sauce or chipotle chili powder. If you want to skip the ranch, you can feel free to use store-bought ranch of choice.
- Toppings: I love adding crunchy tortilla strips and creamy avocado to balance everything out!
How to make homemade spicy ranch
The delicious, creamy, spicy ranch dressing is the star of the show here. It’s easy to make and you’ll want to drizzle it on everything. To make it simply:
- Add the greek yogurt, garlic powder, onion powder, fresh lemon juice, dried dill, salt, water and hot sauce to a bowl or mason jar. Not into hot sauce? Use chipotle chili powder instead!
- Mix or shake until the dressing is well combined.
- Taste it and add more hot sauce if you like it spicier!
Keys to the perfect chicken marinade
A great chicken marinade requires three key ingredients to make your chicken super juicy and flavorful:
- Fat from oil or even full fat yogurt or buttermilk
- Acid from vinegar or citrus fruit
- Plenty of seasonings like spices and fresh or dried herbs
How to grill perfect chicken
The grilled chicken in this chopped salad makes it extra delicious and filling! Learn how to grill chicken perfectly every time with this tutorial.
Can I bake the chicken?
Absolutely! Marinate the chicken as directed and then get all of my tips and tricks for baking juicy chicken here.
Customize this chopped chicken salad
- Use the summer veggies you have on hand like tomatoes, different colored peppers, crunchy romaine or even finely chopped broccoli.
- Add a sprinkle of feta or goat cheese for additional creamy, salty or tangy goodness.
- Make it vegetarian by swapping the chicken for chickpeas, black beans or even tofu using the same marinade!
- Try another protein like grilled shrimp or salmon.
How to store this chopped chicken cabbage salad
This healthy chopped chicken salad will stay fresh covered in the fridge for about 2-3 days.
Make it ahead of time
If you want to meal prep this chopped chicken salad or serve it at a bbq or picnic I’d suggest preparing the entire salad the day before and adding the dressing (and avocado) just before serving so that everything stays fresh.
More delicious salad recipes you’ll love
- Street Corn Pasta Salad with Cilantro Pesto + Goat Cheese
- Grilled Chicken Bacon Ranch Pasta Salad
- Summer Glow Strawberry Kale Salad
- Peach, Tomato & Corn Arugula Pasta Salad
- Healthy Summer Broccoli Salad
Get all of my salad recipes here!
I hope you love this flavorful spicy ranch chopped chicken cabbage salad recipe! If you make it be sure to leave a comment and a rating so I know how you liked it. Enjoy, xo.
Ambitious Kitchen
Cookbook
125 Ridiculously Good For You, Sometimes Indulgent, and Absolutely Never Boring Recipes for Every Meal of the Day
Spicy Ranch Chopped Chicken Cabbage Salad
Ingredients
- For the chicken:
- 1 pound boneless skinless chicken breast
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 tablespoon honey
- Juice from 2 small limes
- 1 teaspoon chili powder
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- ½ teaspoon garlic powder
- ½ teaspoon paprika
- ⅛ teaspoon cayenne pepper
- ½ teaspoon salt
- Freshly ground black pepper
- For the salad:
- 6 cups shredded green cabbage (or a mix of purple and green also works)
- ½ cup diced green onion (or sub diced red onion)
- ¾ cup freshly diced cilantro
- 1 cup shredded carrots (from 2 large carrots)
- 1 red bell pepper, diced
- 1 jalapeno, seeded and diced
- ½ cup roasted pepitas
- 1 ½ cups fresh raw corn off the cob (or feel free to use thawed frozen corn)*
- For the spicy greek yogurt ranch:
- ¾ cup plain greek yogurt
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- ¼ teaspoon onion powder
- 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
- ¾ teaspoon dried dill or fresh chopped chives
- ¼ teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
- 2-4 tablespoons water, to thin dressing
- 1-3 teaspoons hot sauce, depending on how spicy you like it (I love cholula!) or you can sub ½-3/4 teaspoon chipotle chili powder
- For topping:
- 1 cup tortilla strips (or 1 cup slightly crushed tortilla chips)
- Optional: 1 avocado, sliced
- Extra cilantro and green onion
Instructions
- Marinate your chicken for at least 30 minutes: in a large bowl, add chicken breast, olive oil, honey, lime juice, chili powder, cumin, garlic powder, paprika, cayenne pepper, salt and freshly ground black pepper. Toss well to combine, then place in the fridge until ready to use.
- While the chicken is marinating you can prep and chop the veggies for the salad. Place all ingredients for the salad in the bowl, except the tortilla strips (and the dressing).
- Make your dressing by combining the following ingredients in a medium bowl or mason jar: greek yogurt, garlic powder, onion powder, fresh lemon juice, dried dill, salt, water and hot sauce. Mix or shake until well combined, taste, and add more hot sauce if you like it spicier, then pour dressing all over the salad and use a tongs to combine salad together with dressing.
- When ready to grill chicken: Preheat your grill to 400 degrees F and scrape off any leftover bits from the grates. Place your chicken breasts on your preheated grill, and close the lid. It's important to keep the lid of your grill closed while your chicken is cooking so that no heat escapes. Cook your chicken breast on the grill for 7-9 minutes per side or until the chicken reaches an internal temperature of 165 degrees F. Cook time will vary a bit depending on the size of your chicken breast, so be sure to check the internal temperature in the thickest part of the chicken breast using a meat thermometer.
- Once chicken is done, cut into strips and top the salad with it, then add tortilla strips. Garnish/top with avocado, cilantro and green onion.
Recipe Notes
Nutrition
Recipe by: Monique Volz // Ambitious Kitchen | Photography by: Eat Love Eats
This post was originally published on July 17th, 2020, republished on June 18th, 2022, and republished on August 21st, 2023.
I’m sure this will be amazing! Is this salad one of those that is better when made ahead of time? Would love it if I could make it the day before an event and just grill the chicken at the time of the meal!
Yes, it’s even more delicious as the veggie marinate in the dressing!
a great looking recipe I might make that 🙂
This is delicious. Make extra dressing as it is so good you might want to slurp it up and have for left overs.
I absolutely love this salad, so much flavour and so healthy. I am in Australia and buy the Coles/woolworths large bag of coleslaw to save on chopping cabbage, carrot and spring onion. Turns out brilliantly 👏
Perfect! Easy, fresh & delicious 🙂
Simply excellent! I increased the dressing because my husband loves it and he declared this meal “fantastic”.
Love it!!
LOVED this salad! The dressing was super good and the crunch from the cabbage was great! Perfect for summer!
So happy to hear that! It’s one of our all-time favs!
This salad just tastes so fresh and makes me feel great. I don’t love ranch so I like to sub it for your spicy cilantro yogurt sauce & it is so good!
Very flavorful! I basically filled just the chicken recipes part of this as a topping for a premade Trader Joe’s southwest salad and my husband commented on the nice flavors of it.. I think the honey and lime really help marinate the spices. Definitely saving this recipe and want to try it in its entirety next time!
Perfect! Let me know if you give the whole thing a try!
I very much enjoyed this salad for lunch today. I substituted out the chicken for black beans (which I marinated in the same way as the chicken) and crunched up some sweet potato tortilla chips for the topping. I definitely recommend the avocado on top as well.
The dressing was great!
Perfect! Love the idea of adding chips on top 🙂
Delicious salad! I absolutely love all the fresh flavors, and the creamy dressing is a perfect compliment.
so glad to hear you’re loving this recipe!
With a total of 40 minutes to have a nutritious dish. Can cabbage be replaced with cucumber?
Sure, but the cabbage is meant to the base of the salad, is that what you’d like to with with the cucumbers instead?
Made this the other day and wow 🤩 such a delish salad! Couldn’t wait to eat the leftovers (which was just as good by the way)
YAY I’m so glad to hear that! And yes it holds up super well as leftovers 🙌
Fav salad!!
Yay! I am so glad you’re loving this salad, Abra.
ABSOLUTELY DELISH!!!
I was so pleased to see that there was an actual dish with the name ranch in it. That wasn’t using ranch seasoning. My god so refreshing.
Hope you enjoy this recipe!
I need to ask where do all the carbs come from I. This recipe?
This recipe is wonderfull !! A lot of flavours, really fresh with a twist of spice. If you don’t like chili, you can totally skip it, the dressing is really good without, I tried it. I used skyr instead of greek yogourt and it works well! Thank you for sharing this recipe!
I fell in love with this recipe the first time I made it and it quickly became one of my family’s go to dinners! Sometimes I cheat and buy a bag of southwest chopped salad because my kiddos prefer to make burrito bowls with the chicken. By far THE best southwest chicken marinade – YUMM!
Yay! I am so glad you and the fam are loving this recipe 🙂
Loved the Chopped cabbage chicken salad.
Yay, I am so glad you are enjoying this recipe ❤️
I knew I was going to make this recipe after I read the ingredient list. It had at least 4 veggies in it that I had gotten in my CSA box. This is the first salad my 14 year old son has ever eaten 2 servings of. The chicken was so delicious. I wish I would have made more to have leftovers. I added sharp cheddar cheese at the end because, why not. I forgot the tortilla chips and I know they would have added a great crunch. Overall a great salad!
Ahh that is incredible!! I’m so glad you both loved it. Cheddar’s an amazing addition, too! I need to try that 😍
This is my husbands new favorite meal. The first time we made it I used green cabbage, and the second time the cabbages looked extra gross at the grocery store…so I grabbed a Napa cabbage instead. We like it better with the Napa cabbage. Thank you for this recipe we LOVE IT!!!
Ooh love that idea — I’ll try that next time! Glad you both loved it 🙂
The chicken turned out amazing with the marinade!! Highly recommend
YAY I’m so glad you enjoyed it, thank you!
So refreshing and delicious with a kick! We used siracha and topped with crushed tortilla chips. Can’t wait for leftovers!
Such a delicious and healthy meal! We marinated the chicken for 6 hours and it was so juicy!! The salad has so much flavor and helped me get plenty of veggies in after a big weekend LOL! Will make again!
So glad you loved it 🙂 And yes haha give me all the crunchy veggies!!