Teriyaki Chicken Salad

I’ve been on a salad making kick lately, finally getting around to photographing all of our favourite main dish salads.

This project started out as being for my keto block, but ended up spilling over to my other 2 food blogs.

This teriyaki chicken and pineapple salad, for instance, doesn’t QUITE fit into my own low carb diet... but it’s way too fantastic of a recipe to not share!

So, here we are!

This salad - with colourful vegetables, juicy chicken, and sweet grilled pineapple - is a great way to get the whole family to eat more vegetables.

I’m a big fan of main dish salads, and this one does NOT disappoint. It’s hearty, filling, and overflowing with delicious flavors.

The best part?

If you get the chicken marinating ahead of time, this is a great recipe for easy dinners on busy weeknights.

Toss the chicken on the grill, and you’ll have a fantastic meal in half an hour or less!

Anyway, let’s get to it!

Ingredients

This grilled teriyaki chicken salad is a SUPER simple recipe, and you’ll definitely be able to find all the ingredients in almost any grocery store.

I tend to look at this in 3 parts - the base salad, the toppings, and the juicy teriyaki chicken. Some notes for you:

Base Salad

I like to meal prep several days worth of salad base bowls on grocery day - some sort of fresh greens, along with some fairly neutral fresh vegetables - Usually shredded broccoli stems, carrot, green onions, cucumber, and radish.

1 batch makes 10 salads, so we’ve got a few days worth of base salads to adorn all kinds of different ways. (They tend to last 6-7 days in the fridge.

It’s a pretty slick way to get a lot of vegetables into our diet, and feels like SO much less work than making full salads individually.

See my Salad Meal Prep post for full details on how I do it.

Want to make this salad as a standalone thing?

You can use a base of salad greens, spring mix, baby spinach, and/or romaine lettuce. I’d add some cucumber and green onions in, for good measure.

Teriyaki Salad Toppings

Because the chicken is so blah looking (brown sauce, white meat), I like to have a lot of colour in the salad toppings.

While this varies every time I made this salad, I tend to use:

Fresh pineapple rings
Broccolini
Red Cabbage (Sometimes Napa cabbage)
Red Bell Pepper (Sometimes green bell peppers as well)
Red Onion
Green Onions

Sometimes I’ll also use some mandarin oranges, crunchy cashews, and/or sesame seeds, but didn’t this time around.

Teriyaki Vinaigrette Dressing Ingredients

I make a light homemade teriyaki sauce themed dressing for this salad.

Rather than the thick, syruppy sauce usually associated with teriyaki chicken, this is a light vinaigrette that shares the flavours of the traditional dish.

In addition to a scoop of the teriyaki marinade, you’ll need:

Olive Oil
Rice Vinegar
Salt and Black pepper

These ingredients are all pretty flexible. Sometimes I’ll swap the rice vinegar out for another acid - lime juice, lemon juice, pineapple juice, or calamansi juice.

Sometimes I’ll swap out up to half of the olive oil with sesame seed oil.

Sesame Oil has a very strong flavour, it can be overpowering in this dressing... so I don’t just swap out the olive oil entirely.

Teriyaki Chicken

I use boneless skinless chicken breasts, marinated in its own teriyaki sauce.

If boneless chicken breast isn’t your thing, feel free to use boneless skinless chicken thighs - 2 or 3 per person, depending on the size of the thighs.

In addition to the chicken, you will need:

Gluten Free Soy Sauce or Coconut Aminos
Light Brown Sugar
Rice Vinegar
Garlic Paste
Ginger Paste
Salt and Pepper

Again, feel free to swap out the rice vinegar for another acid - pineapple juice is popular for this!

How to Make Teriyaki Chicken Salad

The full recipe is in the recipe card at the end of this post. Here is the pictorial walk through, with some more detailed information where necessary.

Marinated Chicken

Trim chicken breasts if necessary, then pound to an even thickness.

Place chicken in a plastic baggie or container.

Whisk together the soy sauce, brown sugar, rice vinegar, garlic, and ginger. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.

Measure out ¼ cup of this mixture into a glass measuring cup or stick blender cup, set aside.

Pour remaining mixture - the teriyaki marinade - into the baggie of chicken, seal and massage it in gently to fully coat.

Chill for 3 hours or so.

Teriyaki Salad Dressing

Add olive oil and rice vinegar to the reserved marinade in a small bowl or stick blender cup.

Whisk or use a stick blender to emulsify, season with a little bit of salt and pepper, to taste.

Cover and chill until ready to use.

Salad Assembly

Heat your grill, spray generously with pan spray.

Slice and core the pineapple, separate broccolini into smaller pieces.

Remove marinated chicken from the bag. Pour remaining marinade into a small bowl, discard bag.

Grill chicken breasts until cooked through - 165 F internal temperature - basting regularly with any marinade left in the baggie*.

We like to start out at high heat to get a bit of a sear, then turn it down to medium heat to cook though,

*Note: Cook for a minute or so after the last basting, for food safety!

As your chicken is cooking, spray the pineapple and broccolini and season with a bit of salt and pepper.

Grill pineapple rings and broccolini until heated through, and nice grill marks are cooked into the pineapple pieces.

Remove the cooked chicken from the grill, cover with foil as you prepare the salads.

Fluff the base salads, or divide salad greens between 2 bowls.

Arrange the cabbage, red peppers, onion, and green onions on the bowls of greens.

Slice the chicken into bite sized pieces, arrange on top of the salad bowls, along with the grilled broccolini and pineapple.

More Gluten Free Main Dish Salad Recipes

Looking for more healthy salad recipes that are substantial enough to serve as a meal and gluten free? Look no further!

Buffalo Chicken Salad
Chicken Bacon Ranch Salad
Chicken Satay Salad
Cobb Salad
Curried Chicken Vietnamese Noodle Salad
Grilled Halloumi & Peach Salad
Harvest Chicken Salad
Hazelnut Crusted Chicken Salad
Honey Ginger Shrimp Salad
Italian Sub Salad
Keto Taco Salad
Mandarin Glazed Chicken Christmas Salad
Mediterranean Chicken Salad
Salad Meal Prep
Seafood Cobb Salad
Seared Tuna Salad
Sesame Ginger Chicken Salad
Shawarma Chicken Salad
Steak Salad with Creamy Wasabi Dressing
Thai Pesto Salmon Salad

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