Recipe- Tossed WIth Crunchy Toppings Mandarin Chicken Salad

This Mandarin chicken salad ups the ante of what a chicken salad can be. It’s piled high with sweet mandarins, shredded chicken, avocado, crunchy toppings, and tossed with a zingy lemon vinaigrette. But when it’s mandarin season and you see those bags of Cuties at the market, you must make this mandarin chicken salad! It’s got plenty of protein to fill you up, yet it’s light enough to not weigh you down, and because the ingredient list is super simple you can easily throw it together. My kind of salad.

Ingredients

2 chicken breasts, boneless and skinless
5 cups spinach
4 mandarins, peeled and separated
1 avocado, ripe and diced
1 cucumber, sliced
2 green onions, chopped
1/4 cup slivered almonds
sprinkle of black and white sesame seeds

Method

* Mix the vinaigrette ingredients together and pour 3/4 of it into a container, along with the chicken to marinate. Ideally, you should marinate the chicken for a few hours, but 30 minutes is fine as well.

* Preheat your oven to 425F and add the marinated chicken breasts to a baking dish. Bake for 20-25 minutes until cooked through.

* Shred the chicken using either a fork or a stand mixer. Then in a large mixing bowl, toss all the ingredients together. Drizzle the remaining lemon vinaigrette on top.