Sweet Grilled Pineapple Balsamic Chicken Salad
Whenever I go out to dinner, I almost always order a grilled chicken salad, not only because they’re healthy, but also because they’re delicious! Grilled chicken tastes so much better on salads than baked or fried chicken. To save money, I decided to buy a ton of salad ingredients and prepare salads to eat throughout the week instead of ordering salads to go at restaurants.
I bought about six boneless skinless chicken breast to go with the salads. I marinated them in balsamic dressing, 1/2 cup pineapple juice, sea salt, and red pepper flakes.
After letting the chicken marinate for a couple of hours, I grilled it and placed it in the refrigerator.
Ingredients for the salad: roma tomato, cold macaroni, avocado, whole wheat croutons, sweet banana peppers, and spring mix salad.
Cold macaroni seems like a weird salad addition, but it’s amazing with balsamic. Cold macaroni is my favorite.
After taking this photo, I threw all the ingredient in the bowl, diced the chicken, and mixed it all together. It was much prettier displayed like this though:)
Ugh! Omg ANOTHER salad…
hahaha I’m kidding!!!! I just wanted to beat all the naysayers to the punch 😉 You make salad eating look glamorous, I’m ready to try this one out! Thank you Taralynn 🙂
Looks tasty as always! Will you please share that cranberry chicken recipe!? It looks phenomenal and I would love to give it a whirl!
Love the idea of adding the cold macaroni to the salad! Definitely going to try the balsamic/pineapple marinade – seems simple and easy!
Forget macaroni–have you tried bowtie?!
pineapple & balsamic sounds like a delicious combo, I never would have thought of that.
That looks superb! I love grilled chicken!
XO Chloe
A Latte Lipstick
Maybe it’s just me, but I am not a huge fan of pineapple juice used in any sort of marinade. I learned from my own mistakes because I love pineapple and tried it once in a teriyaki kabob marinade, but Pineapple contains an enzyme called bromelain that breaks down the meat (bromelain and papain from papaya are actually used in commercial meat tenderizers) and I find it makes the texture of the chicken change significantly. It’s hard to describe but it makes it taste almost pasty.
Just a heads up and my two cents 🙂 I love seeing your recipes though Taralynn, not trying to be a Debbie downer just giving a heads up for readers who might not know about that.
Jen, I’ve had that happen on kabobs before. I couldn’t even eat them. I think the key is to only let it marinate for 15-30 minutes; that way the enzyme doesn’t have time to alter the texture of the meat.
Wow!! that looks delicious! Definitely trying it.
Thank you for this recipe 🙂