crispy artichoke and chicken salad

moonlights as a great meal prep recipe!

Click here for the WTC recipe index and scroll to the bottom of this post for a PDF of today’s recipe.

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Oh boy, do I love a big a$$ salad for dinner! A leafy green salad with meager toppings is not a dinner salad. But a salad like this one, where the greens are almost secondary to the other ingredients? Now we’re talking.

This sheet-pan chicken with artichokes and potatoes was a major hit last July, and we’re borrowing elements of that recipe for this salad. We’re again using the marinated artichoke brine to marinate our chicken. And we’re again baking canned artichokes. But this time, we’re really letting those artichoke leaves crisp up and get golden brown by spreading them out and giving them lots of space on the baking sheet.

Throw it all together with a zippy lemon Parm dressing, kale (lots of subs in the notes below the recipe for you kale haters!), white beans (plant-based protein — sustained energy!), crunchy croutons and nuts (more plant protein!), and you’ve got the type of salad that even the biggest salad-for-dinner skeptics out there will admit is freaking delicious.

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why are we adding worcestershire to salad dressing?

Worcestershire is a really wonderful umami-rich ingredient to throw into salad dressings or marinades. Consider it a cousin to soy sauce or fish sauce — tons of salty, savory flavor. It’s made up of anchovies, molasses, vinegar, onion, and garlic — all the good stuff! Adding a smidge to this salad dressing adds wonderful salty depth.

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a case for high quality

There are a lot of areas where I cut costs. I very rarely buy clothing unless it’s on sale. I buy furniture second-hand. But at the grocery store, with rare exception, I do not bargain shop.

Why? Because quality seriously impacts the taste of your food. And I like food that tastes good.

Case in point: The first time I tested this recipe, my InstaCart shopper brought me crappy Parmesan cheese. The cheap kind. The kind that feels like rubber. I was nap-trapped and couldn’t run to the store so used it — and it was all wrong. The dressing was muted and dull; it tasted boring.

So I re-tested it with the good stuff: real, authentic Parmigiano Reggiano. That is what you want the label to say. And you want the rind to look like the photo above. That’s how you know you’re getting authentic, aged, high-quality Parm.

I know it’s a few bucks more expensive, but don’t skimp on your Parm!

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how am I going to feed this to my kids?

My 19-month-old will dive head first into a bowl of salad, no problem. My 3-year-old? Absolutely not. So I kept all of the roasted ingredients separate on his plate: one pile of chopped chicken, one pile of halved artichoke hearts, one pile of croutons, and a few chunks of parm (he loves parm). Huge glob of ketchup. And ya know what? He actually ate almost everything!

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crispy artichoke and chicken salad

Serves 4