Chicken apple Gouda salad

If you know me, you’ll know that I am a chronic restaurant researcher. I read menus and pick out what I want to eat before we go to the restaurant. The inspiration for my chicken apple Gouda salad came from that research. When Mac and I headed out to the Black Hills over Labor Day weekend, I checked out a few places to eat near our hotel. To be fair, I was actually looking for restaurants or bars that carried the ACC Network. And because we were in western South Dakota, no one had the ACC Network.

Anyhoo, I found Mackenzie River Pizza and made us eat there because Mac’s name is Mackenzie. I ordered an amazing flatbread and thought the ingredients would be perfect as a salad. I made a mental note of the ingredients, and that’s how this chicken apple Gouda salad came to be. Apples are also in season in our neck of the woods, so I grabbed a bunch at a local orchard.

I decided to marinate the chicken in a tangy Dijon sauce to counter the sweetness of the barbecue sauce as dressing. The marinade also adds some more moisture (that sounds weird) to the salad. Basically, you don’t want your chicken to be too dry, and you don’t want to drown the salad in barbecue sauce. I also like the flavors of the chicken and sauce with dark, crunchy mixed greens. You can swap in your preferred lettuce, but I like the heartiness that mixed greens add here. I would probably use a butter lettuce or spinach but not an iceberg.

Once you get the base ingredients of the chicken apple Gouda salad, you can get a little crazy with your salad toppings. Bacon would be absolutely divine here. I have an addiction to Wal-Mart’s garlic black pepper fried onions, so I threw some on here. Mac loves fried roasted red peppers. If you have some time to make them, caramelized onions would be fantastic. (I’m not a big raw onion on salad kind of gal). You could even add nuts (I would go with a meatier nut like walnuts) or dried fruit like cranberries.