When I travel I like to bring a magazine on the flights with me. On my last business trip in April I made it through the 3 Food Network magazines I brought with me before my last flight, so during my layover in Atlanta I scoured the shelves for something that would interest me. I was hoping for a book of crosswords, but all I could find were Sudoku and Word Searches. Then I saw the most appetizing looking salad on the cover of Everyday with Rachael Ray. It was the May issue and had lots of Mexican style recipes and party ideas. This salad recipe has been worth the $4 I spent because I’ve made it four times already! I’ve even made just the sauce for leftover chicken and created nachos when I didn’t have any lettuce left.  Another variation, and time saving tip, is to use leftover chicken and warm it through in the sauce.

You have to make this! (It takes care of Mexican Monday and Salad Night)

Chipotle Chicken Tortilla Salad

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 lb chicken, sliced into strips
• 1 tsp each cumin, paprika, coriander
• 1/3 C + 1 tbsp olive oil, divided use
• 1 shallot
• 1 clove garlic
• 1-2 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce depending on your desired heat level
• 2 tbsp sherry vinegar
• 1 tbsp brown sugar
• 2 hearts of romaine lettuce
• 1/2 onion, thinly sliced
• 1 avocado, diced
• juice 1 lime
• 2 tomatoes, diced
• 1/2 C chopped cilantro
• 2 C crushed tortilla chips

Steps

1. Season chicken with salt and pepper and spices. Cook completely in a large skillet with 1 tbsp olive oil. Remove chicken from skillet and set aside.
2. Make the sauce/dressing in a food processor or blender. Puree shallot, garlic, chipotle peppers, vinegar and brown sugar. While the machine is running, pour in 1/3 C olive oil. Simmer in the same skillet from step 1 for about 1 minute.
3. Make salad with remaining ingredients. Top with chicken and warm dressing.

And don’t throw away the remainder of the can of chipotle peppers in adobo! I have an ice cube tray that I use for freezing foods. Simply put a pepper in each segment of the tray and the sauce over each of them, when frozen put into a freezer bag and now you’ll have chipotle peppers in adobo whenever a recipe calls for them. As a general rule of thumb, one ice cube is about 1 tbsp. I do this for tomato paste too.

Update August 2016: We’ve made this salad many times and it was a favorite go-to dinner for quite some time. It was fun to revisit it this summer, and while I’m still not thrilled with these updated photos, they’re immensely better than what you see above! I now prefer to buy the colorful tortilla strip salad toppings to crushing up regular tortilla chips; I find they provide a better crunch ratio as they don’t get soggy as quickly.