Easy chicken and pasta salad

Written by Catherine Saxelby on Wednesday, 11 November 2009.
Tagged: diabetes friendly, easy, egg-free, low GI, low salt

  • Ready In: 20 minutes
  • Prep Time: 10 minutes
  • Cooking Time: 10 minutes
  • Serves: 4
Easy chicken and pasta salad

 

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.

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