Buffalo Chicken Salad

Spice up your life with this delicious slow-cooker buffalo chicken salad. Top it with your favorite vegetables, a drizzle of ranch and a few crunchy corn chips, and you have a salad dinner your family can get excited about!

Sometimes you find a slow-cooker recipe that is just so easy and so tasty, you need more ways to use it. This is one of those. My slow-cooker buffalo chicken recipe is easy breezy—dump frozen chicken breasts, wing sauce and a ranch packet into a crock-pot in the morning. At dinner time, shred the chicken and stir it back into the sauce. Done.

I typically have served this on buns as a sandwich. That’s nice and all, but sometimes feel really disenchanted with sandwich meals. Especially depending on the type of bun, sometimes it feels like all I’m eating is bread! Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything particular against bread. But sometimes it’s just time for a change.

I like to freshen things up by serving our favorite meats over salads. I love this like I love rice bowls—SO versatile! And a great way to use up left overs!

I mentioned this is a recipe to “spice up your life”. Well, it is indeed fairly spicy. I really need to work on getting my kids to tolerate more spiciness—my husband and I love it! But until the day their taste buds are a little more mature, I always make a kid-friendly slow-cooker Italian chicken for them. I’ll include the recipe for this one too. It’s also great in flatbread wraps, or salads or over rice.

I didn’t get a picture of my baby’s plate this time—he was too hungry and ate it before I snapped the picture. But he actually loved the Italian chicken—which is always exciting.

A note—the 3.5 oz chicken portion was good for me, but my husband had closer to a 5 oz portion, since he needs more calories than I do.

The Meal:

• 3.5 oz buffalo chicken

• 1/3 oz cheddar cheese

• 1 oz Frito corn chips

• 1 Tbsp Ranch Dressing

• 3 cups of salad greens (romaine, spinach, green leaf, iceberg, etc)

• 1 ½ cups chopped veggies (cucumber, tomato, celery, peppers, etc)

Recipe Used in this meal:

Slow-Cooker Buffalo Chicken

Serving size: about 5 oz

8-10 Servings

Ingredients

• 5 chicken breasts (boneless, skinless, frozen)

• ½ cup of hot wing sauce

• 1 ¼ cup of mild wing sauce

• 1 packet ranch dressing & seasoning mix

Directions

1. Place frozen chicken breasts in slow cooker.

2. Pour wing sauce over the chicken breasts

3. Sprinkle ranch seasoning packet over chicken and sauce.

4. Cook on low for 6 hours.

5. Shred chicken, the return to sauce. Cook an additional 30 minutes.

Slow-Cooker Italian Chicken

Serving size: 4 ozs

4 servings

Ingredients

• 2 chicken breasts (boneless, skinless, frozen)

• 1 cup chicken broth

• 1 ½ Tbsp Wishbone Italian Dressing mix

Directions

1. Place frozen chicken breasts in slow cooker.

2. Add chicken broth and cook on low for 6 hours.

3. When ready to serve, remove chicken from broth and shred.

4. Sprinkle Italian dressing mix over the shredded chicken. Add ¼ cup of the chicken broth from the slow cooker to moisten and mix well.

5. Serve warm or chilled.

Nutrition Facts Label for Entire Meal:

Nutrition Facts Label for Slow-Cooker Buffalo Chicken:

Nutrition Facts Label for Slow-Cooker Italian Chicken: