Easy chicken and pasta salad
- Ready In: 20 minutes
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cooking Time: 10 minutes
- Serves: 4
Whip up this quick summer salad for a lunch or light dinner - easy if you've got leftover cooked pasta. And it works with all sorts of ingredients. See some of the variations you can try below.
Ingredients
- 1 cup small shell pasta, uncooked
- 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 cup cooked chicken pieces, diced and skin removed (around 200 g)
- 1 punnet (250 g/8 oz) cherry tomatoes, halved
- 1 avocado, diced
- 2 tablespoons (60 g/2 oz) chopped sun-dried tomato
- 1/3 cup chopped parsley
- juice of 1 lemon
Nutrition per serve
1720 kJ (410 Calories), 22 g fat (includes 5 g saturated fat), 32 g carbohydrate (includes 7 g sugars), 6 g fibre, 55 mg sodium. Read our nutrition rating system.
Directions
1. Bring a large saucepan of water to the boil and cook pasta for 8 minutes, until tender. Drain and rinse under cold water. Place in a large bowl, add olive oil and toss well.
2. Add chicken, tomatoes, avocado, sun-dried tomatoes and parsley to pasta and combine. Drizzle over lemon juice. Toss lightly and serve in a bowl.
Variations
This recipe turns out well with many different ingredients – the base is the cooked pasta:
- Substitute 1 x 400 g can of tuna that you drain and add in place of the cooked chicken. Add in 2-3 tablespoons drained capers.
- Swap the chicken for 1 cup of any cold cooked meat you have leftover eg roast lamb, roast beef. Add a dash of grated horseradish sauce to the pasta.
- Make up salad as above. Just before serving, toss through 2 cups rocket leaves or baby spinach leaves.
- Instead of parsley, use torn basil leaves. Replace sun-dried tomatoes with 2 tablespoons black olives or baby capers.
- You can use 4 tablespoons of a vinaigrette dressing if you don’t have the olive oil or lemon.
