Chicken & Black Bean Spinach Salad

The chicken spinach salad is a lunchtime power boost that will fuel you through the afternoon. It’s packed with veggies, black beans and tossed with a simple garlic-lime dressing. Prep the ingredients ahead of time for easy weekday lunches.

Every time I share a salad I feel this urge to over-justify its existence seeing as salads at my house are more of an exercise in cleaning out the fridge versus a composed “recipe”. But sometimes I find myself making the same thing over and over and so, in sense, it graduates to a proper recipe complete with a list of required ingredients and instructions for making it.

And so is the case with this chicken spinach salad with black beans and a whole bunch of other things. It has crunch, it has creamy textures, it has a super simple homemade dressing. It is what I’ve been eating on repeat for lunches lately.

It’s loaded with southwest-y ingredients tossed with a simple garlic-lime dressing. It’s easily customizable depending on your tastes and it’s totally make-ahead appropriate which is always nice for weekday lunches.

In a nutshell, it’s a noontime power bowl of goodness that will fuel you through the afternoon so you don’t hit the wall at 3 o’clock, otherwise known as slumpy time. Slumpy time is the worst.

Some Ingredients You’ll Need

Feel free to experiment with the ingredients adding more or less of what you like or don’t like. This is not a fussy recipe – adaptations are welcome.

• For the greens, I like fresh spinach, although you can use your favorite green like spring mix, arugula, or even chopped romaine lettuce.
• Sliced radishes give the salad a peppery bite and add a little happy pop of pink.
• I love the black beans in this salad, but you could substitute pinto beans, cannellini beans, or chickpeas if that’s what you have on hand. 
• Some crumbled feta cheese (which I realize isn’t exactly “Southwest”, so for a more authentic experience use queso fresco).
• Avocado
• Cooked boneless, skinless chicken breast. I like to cook it ahead of time and keep it in the fridge. Or use super convenient shredded rotisserie chicken.
• The dressing is a simple lime juice, olive oil, and garlic combo.

Make-Ahead Tips

This is the sort of salad, if you have cooked chicken on hand you can easily prep the rest ahead and toss it all together later for lunch.

For best results, store the components individually in the fridge so when it’s time for lunch nothing is wilted or soggy or otherwise unappealing.

The recipe as written makes two large salads, but, depending on your appetite, you can stretch the ingredients to make four small chicken spinach salads.

Happy salad-making!

More Easy Recipes

• Southwest Chicken Wraps
• Cucumber Avocado Wraps
• Caprese Roast Beef Sandwiches
• Short-Cut Crispy Chicken Salad

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