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Our Asian Sesame Chicken Salad takes us back to our childhood, when our mom would make it. The trick to this version is to omit the sugar and soy sauce, while still trying to mimic the yummy flavors we grew up loving. After many attempts, we got it!! It’s so fun when food takes us back to happy memories.
Asian Sesame Chicken Salad is one of our signature recipes. We’ve taken this salad to many luncheons and dinners and always get asked for the recipe.
Have you seen the newly released Whole30 Cookbook? Our Asian Sesame Chicken Salad was just featured in it, so exciting!!
Another great idea is it’s easy to assemble and you can combine the salad and have it stay good for hours. This is especially nice when taking it to a party where it may sit out for a while.
Here is the basic line up of ingredients:
To make things easy just use pulled roasted chicken from the store. Lets be honest, we don’t always have time to make our own roasted chicken, so it’s nice to have options when possible.
Our Asian Sesame Chicken Salad Dressing is what makes this salad!
In this dressing, you will substitute coconut aminos in place of soy sauce to make this tasty dressing. Coconut aminos is made from organic coconut tree sap and has 65% less sodium than regular soy sauce. It’s soy free, GMO free, and gluten free. Coconut Aminos is one of those health changes we’re so glad we made.
You can find coconut aminos at most grocery stores, it’s amazing how people are demanding clean products and regular stores are starting to stock these types of items.
Another trick is to make this Asian Sesame Chicken Salad dressing naturally sweet without using sugar, we loving using dates in salad dressings. We’re big fans of using natural sugars from fruit whenever we can substitute it in a recipe.
Hope you enjoy this salad as much as our family and friends. Thanks for following along as we try and bring you some of our favorites!
Asian Sesame Chicken Salad
Ingredients
Asian Sesame Chicken Salad ingredients:
- 4 cups napa cabbage, shredded
- 4 cups green cabbage, shredded
- 1 cup red cabbage, shredded
- 1 1/2 cups snow peas, trimmed
- 1 cup carrots, shredded
- 1/2 cup cilantro, chopped
- 3 green onions, sliced
- 2 cups cooked chicken, shredded
- 1/2 cup sliced almonds
- 2 tablespoons black sesame seeds
- 2 tablespoons sesame seeds
Asian Sesame Chicken Dressing ingredients:
- 1/4 cup coconut amino
- 1 tablespoon garlic, minced
- 1 tablespoon ginger, minced
- 2 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
- 2 tablespoon light olive oil
- 2 dates, mashed (see notes)
- 1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon pepper
Instructions
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Combine all the salad ingredients into a large bowl.
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Mix dressing ingredients until well incorporated.
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Pour over salad ingredients.
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If you like a lightly dressed salad, don’t add all the of the dressing to your salad.
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Serve immediately.
Recipe Notes
As a side note we soak our dates in warm water for a couple minutes. Then we mash them with a fork before adding them to the dressing.
I found this recipe in the whole 30 cookbook and wanted to tell you how much I love it! It’s been so hard to find a good Asian dressing without added sugar. The version in the book has orange juice instead of dates so that’s how I’ve been making it. It has been such a game changer for me. I make this dressing almost once a week- sometimes I use it on a salad and sometimes I’ll just marinate chicken in it. Is there any reason to use dates vs OJ? Thank you!!
The Whole30 company asked us to switch out the dates, you can use either. Personally we still love it with the original recipe using dates!
thanks for this recipe, particularly the dressing! my husband has just been diagnosed as a type 2 diabetic, and this dressing recipe will work for our salads!
i saw the note someone else left about the orange juice and since i didn’t have any dates in the house, it was a nice substitute. i only used 1 T. what amount would you suggest?
1/4 cup is what we use.
Do you think this salad would last well for lunches throughout the week as long as the dressing is added later? I’m always looking for good make ahead lunches and this looks delicious!!
Absolutely!!!
I’m super excited to make this tomorrow. I just bought all the ingredients. I’m quite sure it doesn’t matter but the ingredient list states “snow peas” but it appears that the pictures include “sugar snap peas”. I imagine either will work, correct?
Yes thats great!
Would the measurements for soy sauce be the same as the coconut aminos? I just bought some gluten free soy sauce and don’t want to have to buy more right now if I don’t have to!
Yes
I can’t seem to find Napa cabbage at the stores by my house. How big of a difference will it makes if I use extra green and red cabbage without the napa?
We love the texture of napa, but it will still be delicious without it!
I made to whole30 version with OJ, how long is the dressing good for and should it be refrigerated?
LOVE THIS SALAD!!!
In the recipe it says: 1/2 sliced almonds
Do you mean 1/2 cup?
Yes, thanks for catching that!