A chicken kale salad to crave
This is a fully loaded kale salad that was intentionally designed to be satisfying to have as a meal. It has great variety of textures and flavours – crunch and saltiness from chickpeas, (soft) chewiness of the kale leaves, fresh juiciness from the tomatoes, tender meaty bits of chicken all tossed with a rich, cream tahini dressing. It’s incredibly filling. And the high delicious factor goes without saying! But really, the absolute star here is the tahini dressing which is so creamy, it’s hard to believe there’s not a drop of mayonnaise in it. The richness is natural, from tahini, enriched with olive oil, balanced with the fresh tang of lemon and a good hit of savouriness from parmesan. You could actually skip all the add-ins and just make this salad with kale and that creamy tahini dressing, and it would still be scoff-worthy. But I really hope you try this recipe in its entirety too, because it’s something else!
Ingredients in this chicken kale salad
I’m not going to lie – the ingredients list is longer than 95% of the recipes on my website. Because there’s a number of components to this salad. But it’s worth it! And we’re just making a salad here. It’s perfectly straight forward. 🙂
The kale (& onion)
First up, the kale! Tuscan kale – This is the first recipe I’m sharing using tuscan kale, ordinarily I use the more common curly kale. Also known as also known as cavolo nero, black or lacinato kale, the leaves are shaped like silverbeet/chard and not as bushy/curly as regular kale (curly kale) so it’s more suitable to cut into slaw-like strips like I do in this recipe. The leaf is also softer than curly kale. If using regular curly kale (which you totally can), don’t try to cut it into strips (it gets all crumbly). Just chop or tear into small bite size pieces. Onion – Just a quarter of a red onion which we sliced very finely so it flops throughout the salad. I like the freshness if adds into this salad.
creamy tahini dressing INGREDIENTS
Tahini – This is plain pureed sesame and it’s the star player here, providing richness and creaminess in the dressing so it clings to every bit of the kale (and everything else it touches). Be sure to get hulled tahini which is the more common variety here in Australia (pale beige colour) not unhulled tahini (darker in colour and bitter). Tahini is typically found in the health food aisle in grocery stores, else alongside spreads. Extra virgin olive oil – The oil in this dressing, rather than using just tahini which makes the dressing too thick. Parmesan – For a good hit of savoury flavour. It’s best to grate your own but even pre-grated is fine because we blitz it smooth. Alternative – Anchovies. Oh yes! Use as many as you dare to add flavour and salt without the sauce tasting fishy. Lemon – The tang in this dressing, to balance out the richness of the tahini and olive oil. Fresher than vinegar, though you can substituted with apple cider vinegar or white wine vinegar. Garlic – Just one clove, else the raw garlic flavour is a little too full on (blitzing really brings out the flavour of raw garlic!). Water to thin the sauce to a toss-able consistency. Don’t worry, it doesn’t dilute the dressing flavour, there’s loads of flavour in the dressing!
burst roast tomatoes
Named as such because they burst in your mouth! Literally just cherry tomatoes (or grape tomatoes, as I seem to use more often these days) roasted in a little oil, salt and pepper until they are a little wrinkled which means in the inside is beautifully soft.
THE CHICKEN
To keep things easy, I just use a store bought roast chicken and shred it myself. If you poach and shred your own, toss the chicken in a pinch of salt and pepper before using in this recipe (because store bought chicken is brined so the flesh has salt).
crispy seasoned chickpeas
And last but certainly not least, the crispy chickpeas! I’m using my go-to spice mix for chickpeas here, recently featured in the Spicy maple roast carrots recipe. It adds great crunch into this salad and nice little salty seasoned pops, as well as adding a starch to fill the meal out. And it’s a “good starch” too, that will keep you feeling fuller for longer. 🙂
How to make this chicken kale salad
While there are a few components to this salad, there’s a nice workflow to it:
1. Burst roast tomatoes & crispy chickpeas
2. STRIPPING KALE LEAVES
Because the stem of kale leaves are quite tough and fibrous, I remove the leafy part from the stem. I just rip it off – quick, easy, effective!
3. Making the kale salad
I forgot the egg 🙂
As I was writing up this post, I realised I forgot to include the soft boiled egg in the recipe video. It is an optional extra and something I added as a last minute addition to dial up the good-for-you substantial-ness of this salad even more. If you don’t mind the chew, feel free to skip this step! But it doesn’t need it. In fact, as I said in the opening, it doesn’t need all the extras. You could skip the chicken, the chickpeas, the onion and tomatoes, and just make a giant bowl of kale tossed in this dressing and it will be a great kale salad side dish. But if you want to make a statement meal-worthy salad, I urge you to go all in, at least once, to experience the greatness of this kale salad! And I hope you become obsessed with it as I have. 🙂 – Nagi x PS Great one for making ahead up to 2 days. Even the “marinated kale” keeps perfectly and won’t go limp like regular leafy greens once they come into contact with oil.
Watch how to make it
Life of Dozer
In exciting news – the RTM sign reveal! Yes, a giant life-size Dozer sticker on the front of RTM. It is actually quite worrying what a thrill I got to slap a giant Dozer sticker on the RTM window. 😂 And in other news, Dozer was visiting RTM for a shoot day with a professional photographer (Rob Palmer). It’s been bothering me that I still don’t have an RTM website (one of the reasons I haven’t started a volunteer program and public donations yet) and really great photos to provide to media and for other uses. So we had a big shoot day yesterday to capture great photos of the team at work, and what we do. 🙂 And I’m explaining all of that so I can share that sadly, Dozer was restricted to the office area for hygiene and food safety reasons. You’d think he’d realise he can barge past that stool and bolt into the kitchen to get to the 480 meals we were making that day, but he’s too good a boy for that! Instead, he just stood there and barked all day. 😂 OFFICIAL PROGRESS REPORT – And on a serious note, his rehab post surgery is continuing though I feel like over the past week noticeable progress stalled somewhat. I’m hoping he hasn’t peaked yet and has more improvements to come. Also, I think he picked up a stomach bug or gastro on the weekend so he hasn’t been himself this week with some pretty serious bouts of nausea and hyper salivating. I’m a little worried because vomiting / regurgitation poses a lung infection risk for him because of his medical condition which is serious, scary and can be deadly. He’s been to the vet and has another visit scheduled for tomorrow. Fingers crossed he gets over it soon so we can re-commence his strength training! Mind you, he wouldn’t have been bustling around me in the kitchen to try today’s dish anyway because Dozer’s disregard for kale is pretty well documented: That was the chapter opener photo from my cookbook. I love that photo so much, it just captures his attitude perfectly! 😂 On a more cheerful note though, he did get out to the beach again on the weekend (Bayview in the Northern Beaches of Sydney where I lived until a year ago). It takes me 40 minutes to drive there and it’s worth every minute because honestly, I can’t tell you how happy it makes him. His personality completely changes, he perks up and has more energy. I think it’s great for his muscle rehab so I’m going to keep taking him. Woah, that was a much longer Dozer update than expected! I’ll sign off here and hope to bring more happy news with the next recipe! – Nagi x
