Chicken and Rice Salad, Easy One-Bowl Dinner

Chicken and Rice Salad is a quick and easy dinner in one bowl. It’s cool, refreshing and bright with both savory and sweet notes. If you love a dinner that’s loaded with texture and vibrant color, this is the delicious meal for you!

You guys, I’m kind of obsessed with this delicious rice salad. I’ve had it for lunch four days this week and still look forward to the next bite. It turns out that salads with wild rice can be flavorful, filling, and so satisfying!

This will be as welcome at a potluck, family reunion or outdoor dinner party as it is on your own dinner table or in your lunchbox.

The rice in this salad is a good source of plant-based protein, fiber, plus minerals like manganese, iron and potassium. It puts antioxidants into your salad bowl and is low in fat.

The wild rice blend I used in this salad is savory and a little nutty. It blends four varieties — wild, red, black and brown rice. That variety means lots of different textures, colors and flavors that take a simple clean-out-the-fridge salad to a place that makes it something I would serve to company.

It’s so delicious! I can’t wait for you to make it!

This beautiful brunch salad comes together in minutes, with fresh vegetables, greens, herbs, and precooked chicken, plus nuts and cooked and cooled rice.

Each bite is exciting, flavorful and full of interesting texture and vibrant color. You need nothing else for this to be a perfectly complete meal. But it would be a meal to remember served with my 30-Minute Soda Bread and creamy butter.

The Ingredients

Rice, cooked and cooled:

I generally buy rice at Walmart. I used Lundgren’s wild rice blend and cooked it myself for the salad in these pictures. But brown rice or white rice are also delicious in Chicken and Rice Salad and are cooked and cooled in a fraction of the time — literally minutes.

Today, you don’t even have to cook your own rice, though! Many brands offer pouches of precooked rice, and for those days when saving time is more important, precooked may be your saving grace.

Or you can use leftover rice. Or cook and cool some, like I did. However you get your hands on cooked and cooled rice, your salad will be amazing! (If you can’t find the Lundgren’s wild rice blend at your local store, you can also find it on Amazon. _{[affiliate link]})

Even my small-town Walmart has precooked rice pouches available. Great Value brand Long Grain and Wild Rice, Jasmine, Brown Rice, White Rice. And Uncle Ben’s Ready Rice varieties are available. As always, when you buy something premade the trade-off is higher cost for time savings. Balance what makes sense in your circumstance.

Buy it on Amazon: Ben’s Ready Rice: _{[affiliate link]} Comes in Jasmine, Basmati, Long Grain and Wild, Garden Vegetable, Whole Grain Brown and several other varieties.

Precooked Chicken:

I grabbed a rotisserie chicken to shred for this recipe. However, when I have batch-cooked and stored my Slow Cooker Chicken Breasts recipe or my Perfect Baked Chicken Breasts recipe, then I will pull one of those out of the freezer to use. If you have leftover chicken, use it. It will be perfect!

Fresh Vegetables, chopped/sliced:

Use any combination of fresh vegetables you have in your fridge and kitchen. Choose a variety of textures, tastes and colors. For the salad in these pictures, I used heirloom cherry tomatoes in a variety of colors, chopped celery, chopped green onions and red and yellow bell peppers. Cucumbers, carrots, parsnips, radishes, broccoli, cauliflower, red onion, asparagus, peas, shaved Brussels sprouts, and zucchini are also excellent choices for this delicious rice salad with chicken.

Fresh Greens:

I used Spring Mix which is a combination of baby spring greens like spinach, arugula, radicchio, butter and other lettuces, collards, etc. Mix and match your favorite greens and lettuces for your own perfect Chicken and Rice Salad. I chopped the greens so they blend into the other veggies instead of taking the focus off the chicken and rice as the main base of the dinner salad.

Fresh Herbs:

I chose parsley because I love the earthy, fresh, “grassy” flavor. But any fresh herb that you have in the kitchen, love intensely or that complements the other ingredients you’ve added to your salad will be terrific. Try basil, mint, chives, cilantro, or even thyme.

Sliced Almonds:

Substitute your favorite nuts for added protein and crunch in your rice salad.

Italian Salad Dressing:

You can make your own Italian dressing, but I really love Olive Garden Italian Dressing, and it is FABULOUS in this salad. Ready-made dressing was the time-saver I needed this week, just like the rotisserie chicken.

FAQs

More Easy Salad Recipes for Summer

How to Make Chicken and Rice Salad

1. Add the precooked and cooled rice and shredded chicken to a large salad bowl.
2. Chop/slice your choice of fresh vegetables, the greens and the herbs.  Prepare enough to make 4 or 5 cups.
3. Add the chopped ingredients to the salad bowl and stir to combine.
4. Pour in the sliced almonds and toss the salad so all ingredients are evenly distributed.
5. Serve the chicken and rice salad, allowing each person to dress their portion individually.  Or if you’re serving the salad at a potluck or social gathering, dress the full salad before individual portions are served.

The Recipe