An easy recipe for healthy chicken Cobb salad with a simple homemade vinaigrette. A favorite restaurant meal that you can easily recreate at home!
Chicken Cobb salad is one of my favorite lunches to order at restaurants. What’s not to like about it? It’s so wonderfully flavorful.
And it’s filling too! I rarely finish the humongous servings typical to American restaurants. So I get to take home the leftovers!
Why is it called Cobb salad?
This salad is typically served as a main dish. It was created in the thirties by Robert Howard Cobb, the owner of the Hollywood Brown Derby restaurant.
The story says that Cobb had not eaten until near midnight, and so he just mixed together leftovers he found in the kitchen. Much like Buffalo sauce, it looks like necessity is indeed the mother of invention!
What are the ingredients in a Cobb salad?
The classic salad is made with chopped salad greens, tomato, crisp bacon, chicken breast, hard-boiled eggs, avocado, chives, Roquefort cheese, and red-wine vinaigrette.
In my version, I use spinach leaves instead of salad greens and omit the chives. Here’s an overview of what I use:
- For the dressing: olive oil, vinegar, mayonnaise, Dijon, salt and pepper, garlic powder
- Sliced hard-boiled eggs
- Crispy bacon, chopped
- Cooked chicken breast, sliced
- Fresh spinach
- Cherry tomatoes
- Haas avocado, sliced
- Crumbled blue cheese
How to make a chicken cobb salad
It’s so easy! Scroll down to the recipe card for the detailed instructions. Here are the basic steps:
- Start by arranging the spinach leaves on a serving platter. Drizzle half the dressing over the spinach and toss to coat.
- Arrange the chicken slices and the chopped bacon in the center of the platter. Then place the cherry tomatoes on one side and the avocado slices on the other side.
- Now place the egg slices next to the avocado and the blue cheese next to the tomatoes.
- Drizzle the remaining dressing on top of the salad and serve.
Is it a healthy recipe?
I believe it is. Chicken is considered a healthy protein source and vegetables are very healthy. And current research tells us that cheese is harmless for healthy people.
However, bacon is not ideal. Processed meats have indeed been linked to disease. And while the actual risk is likely very small, I don’t think we should ignore it.
My own personal choice is to consume processed meats, including bacon, in moderation. But if you’d rather not use it, please feel free to omit it from this recipe.
What dressing do you use on a Cobb salad?
You can use any dressing that you like. I like to use a simple vinaigrette made of olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper, and garlic.
I also add a bit of Dijon and mayonnaise, which mostly serve as emulsifiers. Although they also add flavor and creaminess to the dressing.
This is actually the salad dressing that I use for almost all my salads. It’s simple and delicious.
Isn’t this a very complex recipe?
Not necessarily. It’s true that it contains quite a few ingredients. And you need to cook chicken breast, bacon and hard-boiled eggs to make it.
But I keep things simple by preparing these ingredients the day before. They need to be cold anyway.
So I make a baked chicken breast, oven bacon, and hard-boiled eggs the day before and refrigerate. The next day, assembling the salad is a breeze!
How to serve chicken Cobb salad?
The presentation is really important here, as you can see in the photos. It’s such a gorgeous dish! So it’s best to serve it as shown rather than mixed.
You can drizzle half the dressing over the greens, then the remaining half over the remaining ingredients.
Or you can arrange the salad first, present it at the table without the dressing, then pour everything into a large bowl, add the dressing and mix.
Can you keep the leftovers?
You can. The salad greens will become soggy, of course, so I don’t keep those. But the rest of the salad keeps fine for 2-3 days in the fridge, in an airtight container.
More main-dish salad recipes that you might enjoy
I love having salads for lunch. A few of my favorites, in addition to this Cobb salad, include:
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Chicken Cobb Salad
INGREDIENTS
Dressing:
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
- 1 teaspoon avocado oil mayonnaise
- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
Salad:
- 2 large hard-boiled eggs, sliced
- 4 strips crispy cooked bacon, chopped
- 2 medium baked chicken breast, sliced (6 oz each)
- 2 cups spinach leaves
- 1/2 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
- 1 Haas avocado, sliced
- 2 oz crumbled blue cheese
INSTRUCTIONS
- Arrange the spinach leaves on a serving platter. Drizzle half the dressing over the spinach and toss to coat.
- Assemble the salad as shown in the photos. Or in whatever order you like to! I like to arrange the chicken slices and the chopped bacon in the center of the platter, in two straight lines. I place the cherry tomatoes on one side and the avocado slices on the other side. Then I place the egg slices next to the avocado and arrange the blue cheese next to the tomatoes.
- Drizzle the remaining dressing on top of the salad and serve.
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Vered DeLeeuw, LL.M., has been following a healthy real-food diet and blogging about it since 2011. She has taken 
