Rainbow Salad with Chicken and Creamy Lemon Dressing

Full of sunset colors like deep-hued cabbage and beets, rosy radishes, orange carrots, and a lemony yellow dressing, this rainbow salad is a complete and low-carb meal that comes together in 45 minutes or less.

In this huge, delicious salad, we’re focusing on sunset colors: purple cabbage, deeply pink beets, red radishes, and orange carrots – with a lemony-yellow dressing to boot! Plus salad greens, of course, and some chicken (or tofu, if you prefer) to turn it all into a complete meal.

A great habit to get into is salting chicken (and other meats), as soon as you get it home from the store, even (or especially) if you’re not going to cook it for a day or two. It gives the salt plenty of time to season the chicken all the way through.

The salad is so pretty, I don’t even toss it; I just bring it to the table with the extra dressing so people can help themselves. Maybe it’s the power of suggestion or some sort of color-therapy situation, but when I eat this salad I feel completely energized.

Recipe Details: Rainbow Salad with Chicken and Creamy Lemon Dressing

Active time: 45 minutes

Total time: 45 minutes

Makes: 4 servings

Total carbohydrates per serving: 11 grams

Recipe Notes

To make this recipe vegetarian, swap the chicken for one recipe's worth of sliced low-carb tofu.

To lower the carbs even further, swap in more radishes and cabbage in place of the root vegetables. To lower the fat, skip the nuts (but be wary of low-fat mayo, which can often be full of sugar).

Ingredients

For the salad

1 romaine heart, chopped (about 4 cups)
1 carrot, scrubbed, peeled, and sliced
1/2 peeled raw beet, grated
4 radishes, sliced
1 cup finely shredded red cabbage
For topping: either 3 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cooked and sliced, or 4 cups rotisserie chicken, shredded
1/4 cup roasted pepitas (green pumpkin seeds) or chopped toasted walnuts (to toast the walnuts, put them in a 350 oven for 4 or 5 minutes, until they’re just turning golden and fragrant)

For the dressing

1/3 cup regular (not low-fat) mayonnaise (preferably Best Foods or Hellman’s)
Juice and zest of 1 small or 1/2 large lemon
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 clove garlic, pressed or finely minced (or ½ teaspoon garlic powder)
Black pepper, to taste
1/2 teaspoon yellow mustard or 1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric (if you like, just to give it a more yellowy color)

Instructions

Arrange the greens and vegetables on a large platter.
Top with the chicken or tofu.
Whisk together the dressing ingredients, and taste for salt, then drizzle some over the salad.
Top the salad with the pepitas or walnuts. Bring the extra dressing to the table and serve the salad right away.

Photo credit: Catherine Newman