Chicken & Tangerine Salad with Honey Ginger Yogurt Dressing

Sometimes it’s good not to have anything in the fridge to eat. It means I have to get creative if I want to have something good for lunch. I went into the kitchen at lunchtime, starving, completely ravenous, because all I had for breakfast was one of my little cranberry apricot energy balls, which seriously wasn’t enough …

So here I am digging through the fridge. The soup is gone. The ham is mostly gone … but there are two mostly-empty containers of salad greens that need to be used up … okay, then, a salad, but what to put on it? I pulled some chicken nuggets out of the freezer and looked for something to dress this up. In the fruit bowl are some forgotten tangerines … my daughter has me buy these big bags of “cuties” for her … she can eat a whole bag in one or two days, and then she wants more … but eventually she gets tired of them. At that point, there are usually a couple neglected tangerines left. This is one of those times. She has moved on to gala apples, and forgotten the tangerines.

So I settled on chicken and tangerines, and then started wondering what shall I dress this baby with? Scrounged some more and found a partly-emptied container of greek yogurt … yes! that’s it! yogurt and some freshly grated ginger … perfect.

Oh yes. Perfect.

Chicken and Tangerine Salad with Honey Ginger Yogurt Dressing

• Mixed Salad Greens
• Sliced Red Onions
• Tangerines, peeled, separated, and chopped into chunks
• Chicken nuggets or other cooked chicken, heated and chopped into chunks
• Toasted almonds (yes, toast them … they are SO much better toasted!)
• A bit of fresh dill for garnish

I need to warn you: I really love ginger. I love the spicy heat of it. So I used a LOT of it in the dressing and I loved the intensity of it with the sweet tangerines and the crunchy chicken and the toasted almonds. If you are not a ginger fanatic, or if you are not sure if you are, I would recommend seriously toning down the amount of ginger in the dressing.

• 1/8 cup plain greek yogurt (nonfat or lowfat)
• 1 Tablespoon rice vinegar
• 1 Tablespoon freshly grated ginger root (if you’re not a ginger fanatic like me, cut it down to 1/2 – 1 teaspoon)
• 1/4 teaspoon granulated garlic
• 1 teaspoon of honey

Mix all ingredients until well blended. The dressing will not be smooth because of all that yummy ginger root in there. It’s okay. Chunky dressing is a good thing sometimes.

This salad was featured by Bon Appetit Magazine.

This recipe was shared on Foodie Fridays, Katherine Martinelli’s DIY blog hop, Totally Tasty Tuesdays, KM’s Honey Bloghop and Gooseberry Patch Inexpensive Recipes.