Most restaurants today offer some kind of barbecue chicken salad.  No wonder…It’s delicious. One of the best is California Pizza Kitchen’s Original BBQ Chicken Chopped Salad. Rated number one among their employees’ personal favorites, it’s amazingly good. It’s also loaded with a ton of calories.  Shockingly, CPK’s salad has 1133 calories.  I’m sure many of you, like me, have been known to devour one whole salad.  For future, I recommend sharing one.  Better yet, make this skinny version.  With 407 calories, 10 grams of fat and 7 Weight Watchers POINTS PLUS, you can enjoy every bite, guilt-free. One serving is very large too. It’s skinny because I’m using a reduced-fat ranch dressing, reduced-fat tortilla chips and leaving out the cheese. It might just become your family’s favorite main course salad!

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients

½ cup Nancy’s Skinny Ranch Dressing or your favorite store bought reduced-fat ranch, see shopping tip

2 cups cooked chicken breasts, chopped, skinned removed

½ cup Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue sauce or your favorite

8 cups romaine lettuce, chopped

2 cups grape or cherry tomatoes, cut in half

1½ cups jicama, peeled and chopped

1 can (15 oz) black beans, drained and rinsed

1 cup fresh corn, cut off the cob (or frozen and thawed)

1 cup red onion, chopped

¾ cup reduced-fat yellow tortilla chips, crushed

1 lime, cut into 4 pieces, optional

Instructions

1. Prepare the ranch dressing or use a store bought one.  Refrigerate until ready to use.

2. In a small bowl, add the chicken and toss with ¼ cup of barbecue sauce.

3. On 4 dinner size plates, place 2 cups lettuce on each.  Divide and place chicken on top of the lettuce.  Drizzle 1 tablespoon of remaining barbecue sauce over the top of the chicken on each salad.  Add to each, beans, tomatoes, corn, onions, all around the plate.  Sprinkle the tortilla chips on top and drizzle the ranch dressing on top of each salad or serve on the side.  Or, in a large bowl, add all salad ingredients and toss with ranch dressing and barbecue sauce.

4. Garnish with one lime piece and serve.

Makes 4 main-course salads

Food Fact

Did you know CPK’s Original BBQ Chopped Chicken Salad has more calories than their BBQ Chicken Pizza?  The pizza has 810 calories while their salad has 1133 calories.

Jicama comes from Mexico and South America.  It’s a large bulbous, root vegetable with a thin brown skin and white crunchy flesh.  Jicama taste sweet and adds great crunch to salads.

Healthy Benefit

This salad is packed with fiber, 12 grams for one salad!

Shopping Tip

I usually make my skinny ranch dressing but there are some store bought ones that are pretty tasty too. I like Ken’s Steak House Lite Ranch or Marie’s Lite Ranch. In addition, Trader Joe’s reduced-fat Parmesan Ranch dressing is pretty good. It’s sold in the refrigerator section with the lettuces.

I love the packages of cooked chicken at Trader Joe’s.  There are several varieties and all are boneless, skinless.

You’ll find jicama in the produce section of most large supermarkets.

Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue sauce can be found in most large supermarkets.  Bulls-Eye barbecue sauce is another tasty one for this recipe.

Weight Watchers (old points) 8
Weight Watchers POINTS PLUS 7

This entry was posted Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011 at 5:00 am and is filed under Recent, Recipes. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.