Greek chicken salad

“Not a bad concept, but the dressing needs some work” is the entry in my long-running food diary about the latest new recipe I tried. Really, Greek salad with grilled chicken should be a no brainer, but this is from a diet cookbook after all, and one related to a lame reality show at that.

I picked this cookbook up on the give-away shelf at work since there looked to be a few recipes in it that stood a fighting chance. I thought this was one of them, but while I improved upon the dressing somewhat, it would take further work to be a true keeper.  I get that they’re trying to keep the dressing calories down, but I don’t think yogurt was really the way to go with this one.

Greek salad with grilled chicken

Adapted from “The Biggest Loser Family Cookbook”

See full original recipe in the book here.

Ingredients:

8 cups of spinach

2 chopped tomatoes

1½ cup chopped cucumber, seeded

3 ounces crumbled feta

1 cup grilled chicken cubes

1 tablespoon yellow mustard

2 tablespoons cider vinegar

1 tablespoon fat-free plain yogurt

1 tablespoon olive oil

1½ teaspoons honey

2 tablespoons chopped red onion

2 garlic cloves, minced

½ teaspoon Greek seasoning (I used Penzey’s, or you can roll your own)

Method:

Toss spinach, tomatoes, cucumber, feta and chicken in a large bowl. Mix up remaining ingredients for dressing in a small bowl and toss with salad.

Since I was making this dish to eat over a period of days for lunch, I mixed up the dressing separately and just tossed it with some of the remaining mixture. This had the advantage that it let me decide after the first day that the dressing really wasn’t cutting it and added the Greek seasoning, which helped a bit. But I still say that yogurt has no business in that dressing and needs to go. And no way was I going for the 3 tablespoons of yellow mustard originally called for. Because that’s just uncalled for.