This BBQ Chicken Quinoa Salad is loaded with shredded chicken, quinoa, fresh corn, avocado, black beans and cilantro all tossed together with your favorite barbecue sauce!
Can I just tell you how much fun it is to take photos of food in a kitchen that actually has windows! When purchasing my home, one of my favorite aspects about it was the open layout and how much light came into the house – which was something I certainly didn’t have in my old apartment. Not. Even. Close. Despite it being cold and snowy all weekend, I still managed to fill each room with fresh flowers, sit back and take it all in.
Oh and I cooked too of course, it WAS Super Bowl weekend and all.
And let me just go ahead and throw out that I will never (I repeat NEVER) go to the grocery store the night before a big game again. Holy crazy people! We had a few of our friends over Saturday night so I ran out to the store real quick to get everything I needed to make bruschetta. BIG mistake. Not only did I almost have to fight a woman to get to the tomatoes, but you would have thought there was a huge shortage of beer with all the men stocking up like the apocalypse was upon us.
Sigh.
Regardless, I was able to survive my trek through the store and came home excited to make this. Shredded barbeque chicken, fluffy quinoa, black beans, corn, avocado…the perfect salad. This is actually a great dish to make at the end of the week when you don’t know what to do with all those stray leftovers hanging around your kitchen. We had made BBQ chicken sandwiches over the weekend in our slow cooker so I tossed it with quinoa and few other things hanging around my cabinets. The combination tasted super delicious and I think it might be one of those to add to the rotation.
Packed with lots of protein and fiber, this salad is an all around healthy meal that will fill you up and keep you satisfied. It also heats up great in the microwave in case you wanted to save extra to bring to work the next day. How can you go wrong??
BBQ Chicken Quinoa Salad
Ingredients
- 1 cup cooked quinoa
- 1/2 cup frozen or fresh corn, thawed
- 1/2 cup black beans, rinsed and drained
- 1 cup shredded chicken, cooked
- 2 Tbsp barbeque sauce of your choice
- 1/2 avocado, chopped
- 2 green onions, chopped
- Salt and pepper, to taste
- Cilantro, as garnish
Instructions
- Cook quinoa according to package directions. Note: I pre-cooked my chicken in a slow cooker the day before with chopped onion and some BBQ sauce – make sure to plan ahead.
- In a large bowl, mix together quinoa, corn, black beans, chicken and barbeque sauce. Fold in avocado, green onions and season with salt and pepper.
- Top with a bit of cilantro and enjoy!
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Hi! Ok! This is from someone that ONLY cooks in the crockpot 😉 silly question… so by cooking 4-5 chicken breasts.. Do you shred and add all of that chicken, to this recipe? I see it says 1c shredded.. Just confused :/
I love Quinoa and the health benefits of it! This recipe sounds tasty! Now that I think of it, my favorite chicken recipe http://bit.ly/19PwW2W would be great if I substituted the brown rice for quinoa 🙂 Hope to find more great recipes on your site and share some of mine with you. Great post!
Hey, Just curious…is the serving size of 4 and a half cups of this recipe really only 200calories. Or am I just reading it wrong?
Oh thank you for mentioning this! I just changed it, but it should be 1 1/2 cups is 200 calories 🙂 I apologize for the oversight!
Hi! This looks delicious. If I am using chicken and cooked quinoa (both cooked the night before) can this dish be served cold?
I think this dish would definitely taste better heated up, but I’m sure it would still taste great cold!
Absolutely delicious! I didn’t change a thing and it was perfect. It was also my first time making/eating quinoa! So yummy….thank you so much!!
I have seen this recipe prior and used 1 cup dry quinoa to make… did you mean you use 1 cup COOKED or 1 cup DRY to make???
I bought some quinoa last week from organic shop, because all are like crazy about that now and i was looking for recipe and I think I found 🙂
This was SO good! 🙂
This is amazing. I made it on Saturday and brought in for lunch today. My chicken is jerk chicken so lots of flavour and a bit of a kick. It’s the first thing I’m eating today (for lunch) and I imagine it will keep me very full! Thanks for such a great idea xxx
I made this last week and even my whole family of non-healthy eaters absolutely loved it! Thank you for posting this recipe.