Healthy Grilled Chicken Waldorf Salad

You won’t find any mayo in this crunchy and fresh Healthy Grilled Chicken Waldorf Salad! Loaded with apples, grapes and pistachios it’s perfect for using up leftover grilled chicken!

Salads that are coated in a creamy dressing such as chicken, tuna, potato or macaroni salads are ones that I generally won’t touch at a restaurant or buy from the store. Two reasons. One they are usually so thick and gloopy with mayonnaise that you can’t taste anything other than that and two I am always afraid it wasn’t prepared or stored properly and that there’s a good possibility I could get food poisoning if I eat it. I know I’m probably being paranoid, but both of my grandpas worked for the health department and did health inspections at restaurants, schools and grocery stores. I’ve heard enough horror stories to where I just steer clear of these kinds of salads and make my own versions at home.

Chicken salad is one of my favorites to make at home, especially this Healthy Grilled Chicken Waldorf Salad. I love grilling the chicken rather than poaching it because it has so much more flavor when prepared this way, not to mention during the warmer months of the year our fridge always has leftover grilled chicken in it. Chicken Waldorf Salad is one of those great recipes that not only uses leftovers, but take only a few minutes to throw together.

There are tons of ways to make a chicken salad, but the Waldorf version usually contains apples, celery, walnuts, sometimes grapes or raisins and is dressed in a mayonnaise based dressing. I love this salad for all the crunchy add ins, but I’m not a fan of all the mayonnaise. I enjoy a little mayonnaise, but I don’t like the idea of tossing an entire salad in it. To make this grilled chicken Waldorf salad healthy I substituted plain Greek yogurt for the mayo. Sometimes when you make a healthy substitution like this there’s a major difference in the way the finished product tastes, but that wasn’t the case with this.

The salad was perfectly creamy and with the addition of dijon mustard, fresh lemon juice and fresh chives the switch wasn’t even noticeable. Another small change that I made to this Waldorf chicken salad was using pistachios instead of walnuts. Walnuts aren’t my favorite nut, I think they taste a little bitter. Pistachios on the other hand I love and could eat those all day. They’re the perfect size for the salad so you don’t even have to chop them up. The salad can be served as a sandwich, on top of your favorite greens, or if you’re feeling extra lazy just grab a fork and eat it out of the bowl!

More Salad Recipes

Barley Salad with Chickpeas and Cherries

Buffalo Chicken Salad with Spicy Ranch Dressing

Grilled Chicken and Goat Cheese Salad with Blackberry Vinaigrette