Buffalo Chicken Salad

This Buffalo Chicken Salad is an easy, flavor-packed, high protein chicken salad perfect for meal prep lunches! It’s great on sandwiches, wraps, or scooped with crackers or tortilla chips.

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Reasons You’ll Love This Recipe:

• Simple: with less than 10 ingredients, you’ll love the simplicity!
• High Protein: chicken itself is an excellent source of protein, but by swapping in cottage cheese instead of traditional mayonnaise, it makes this chicken salad even higher in protein.
• Has Some Crunch: between the grated carrots and diced celery, there’s some refreshing crunch in this chicken salad!
• Packs Some Heat: if you’re not a fan of buffalo flavored things, maybe skip this one. 😉
• Perfect for Meal Prep: chicken salad is SUCH a great addition to your meal prep plan!

Ingredient Notes & Substitutions:

For a full ingredient list with quantities, please check out the recipe card at the bottom of this post.

• Chicken – you want to use cooked chicken, but you can use anything from rotisserie chicken to canned chicken to meal prepped chicken (I love using my baked thin sliced chicken breast).
• Celery – adds some crunch, and goes perfectly with the buffalo flavor.
• Carrot – grated fresh carrot adds a little texture, color, and a touch of sweetness that pairs perfectly.
• Green Onion – another simple flavor enhancer!
• Cottage Cheese – instead of using mayonnaise, I love blending cottage cheese for an ultra creamy sauce base that’s lighter and packed with protein.
• Hot Sauce – you don’t need buffalo sauce, we’re making our own here, so use a hot sauce of your choice.
• Seasonings – add a little extra flavor to the hot sauce with garlic powder, onion powder, and dried parsley.

How to Make Buffalo Chicken Salad

For complete instructions, please check out the recipe card at the bottom of this post.

1. Blend cottage cheese, hot sauce, and seasonings until smooth.
2. Add to the chopped chicken, celery, carrots, and green onion.
3. Give a stir until everything is evenly coated.

Tips and Variations

• More Spicy: add extra hot sauce or some crushed red pepper flakes!
• Less Spicy: cut the hot sauce in half
• More Veg: you can add extra of the same vegetables, or others like diced bell pepper, cucumber, or jalapeno.
• Greek Yogurt: you can sub Greek yogurt for cottage cheese for another high protein option (slightly different taste, though!)
• Don’t Blend – if you don’t care about the texture of cottage cheese, you can totally save yourself a couple minutes and skip blending the cottage cheese. I do personally love it because it makes it so creamy, though!

Serving Suggestions:

• On a sandwich
• Open face on toasted bread
• On wasa crackers
• Scooped with other crackers
• In a wrap
• Add to a quesadilla
• Lettuce Wrap
• On top of salad greens
• Served with vegetable scoopers, like carrot chips or bell pepper or celery slices

Meal Prep & How to Store

Chicken salad is a great meal prep option. Once mixed, store in an airtight container and keep in the fridge for up to 3 days.

I don’t recommend freezing, as the consistency of the celery, carrots, and sauce get a little weird once thawed!

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More Protein Salad Recipes to Love

• Creamy Honey Mustard Chicken Salad
• Poppy Seed Chicken Salad
• Cranberry Chicken Salad
• Cottage Cheese Egg Salad

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