Eating healthy and low carb chicken salads is a great way to get a high protein low carb meal that'll keep you full all day long.
Many of these can be lightened up and made macro friendly chicken salads by swapping regular mayo for light mayo or cutting the mayo in half with non-fat Greek yogurt.
There's just something special about a delicious chicken salad, whether it be a traditional chicken salad recipe for lunch or something loaded for a main dish dinner or potluck side.
Meal prep tip
We love to meal prep chicken on Sundays to make lunches easier during the week. We usually either buy Costco canned chicken, rotisserie chicken, or buy frozen chicken to shred or cube.
The cheapest way to cook chicken for making chicken salad is to cook a large bag of chicken tenders from frozen, which can quickly be shredded with a mixer. (or by hand with two forks of course)
Basic Chicken Salad
This is our basic go-to chicken salad recipe we make over and over again at our house. It's so simple and versatile!
Our family favorite mayonnaise is this one that's low carb, vegan, paleo, sugar free, dairy free, and gluten free. When we want a lighter mayo we'll buy Hellman's Light.
- 1 large 12oz can of chicken (drained), rotisserie chicken, or shredded (or cubed) chicken
- 1-2 tablespoon mayo (regular or light) - You can swap out half of the mayo for Greek yogurt to lighten up the recipe
- 1 Tbsp+ chopped pickle or celery (or both!)
- ⅛ teaspoon garlic salt - salt and ground garlic powder is fine too
- ⅛ teaspoon ground black pepper
- herbs or seasoning (optional)- our favorites are dill weed or curry powder
Recipe Steps
- Add all of the ingredients to a bowl and toss to combine.
- Serve over lettuce to make a salad, in a wrap or lettuce wrap, or pile it up on your favorite sandwich bread.
When we aren't making a mayo based chicken salad (which is often since I love mayonnaise), I like to chop up any leftover vegetables from the week and mix in chopped leftover roasted or grilled chicken.
Low Carb Salads with Chicken
We've also rounded up 12 more of our favorite chicken salads from both our website and from other recipe websites.
They should give you a wide variety of lunchtime options if chicken salad is a go-to meal like it is for us.
You'll love this healthy version of a chicken salad with grapes from my sister's blog, that only has 7.8 net carbs per serving.
The key to keeping the carb count down for traditional recipes that have higher carb items is to just use less of them, and then beef up on low carb ingredients.
Only 5 net carbs per serving! While the recipe uses a rotisserie chicken, our favorite way to pre-cook chicken is actually in our Instant Pot. But this would also make a wonderful grilled chicken salad too when it's close to summer time.
This is another salad where it's simple to adjust the macros by cutting back on veggies to decrease the carbs, increasing the chicken for more protein, or increasing (or decreasing) the avocado and cheese to change the fat content.
BLTA stands for bacon-lettuce-tomato-avocado, just mix in shredded chicken for your protein and you have a delicious healthy lunch to take to work on when you're on the go! Only 3 net carbs per serving. You can swap the bacon with turkey bacon too.
This lower carb Chinese chicken salad gets on the table fast if you use pre-cooked chicken!
While this does have 1 T of honey in the dressing, chef Carmen says that's an easy ingredient to leave out or to substitute with your favorite low carb sweetener.
Did you know can make your own crunchy low carb croutons with dried bread in less than 20 minutes? 5 net carbs per serving.
While you of course can make your own caesar dressing at home, we've been loving this store bought paleo dairy free caesar dressing made with avocado oil.
Is Chicken Salad Keto?
If you're following a keto diet, you might be wondering if low carb chicken salads can even be on your program. Most people following a keto diet stick to 20 net carbs or less per day, so as long as you're keeping your salads filled with low carb or no carb options, than yes, chicken salad on keto is definitely an option for you.
We do have quite a few keto recipes on our website since my husband followed a keto diet back in 2018 to lose 40 lbs. While he's since switched to low carb and I follow a macro plan, we still have tons of keto friendly recipes on our website for our readers.
Many low carb chicken salad recipe ideas also have healthy fats like olive oil, nuts, healthier mayonnaise brands, or fat from avocado. These all work as ideal healthy fat sources when you're going keto.
Some of the recipes in this post might be considered low carb at first glance, if there are ways to bring down the carbs and make easy swaps to turn them into a keto chicken salad recipe, the notes will be included.
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Alisha Ross says
I was just wondering what to make for dinner tomorrow night…problem solved….the clincher was the cut up carrots….I had just cleaned out my pantry and found a can of pinto beans and one of white beans..so was a no–brainer…but I like the idea of the carrots…also the olives…never have used it in chili before, so will be a new experience…