Elote Chicken Salad

The perfect summer salad loaded with chicken, roasted corn, tomato, radishes, cotija cheese + a homemade creamy cilantro dressing!

Creator: Leslie Stokes

What is Elote anyways?

Elote is spanish for corn and when it’s grilled, it makes any dish taste 10x better!

This is the perfect salad for summer- it’s light + refreshing and the homemade creamy cilantro dressing pulls all of the flavors together.

You can make this salad for meal prep, and easy dinner or to serve at your next BBQ!

Ingredients:

You really want to use fresh corn for this salad. I love to boil mine and then lay it over the gas stove top to get the char marks on the outside. That’s my little hack, but you can totally roast it in a pan or on the grill for a few minutes.

If you have to, you can buy frozen white corn, just make sure you defrost it before adding into a pan to saute just a little. This will keep it from getting mushy or watery.

2-3 cooked chicken breast- see my instant pot method below.
mixed greens/romaine lettuce
grilled corn on the cob
radishes
red bell pepper
tomato
cilanto
plain greek yogurt
jalapeno
lime juice
garlic powder
salt + pepper
apple cider vinegar

The prep:

You will need an emersion blender or small bullet blender to make the dressing. I’ve also linked these dressing cups, that I love to use for meal prep!

I like to pre-cook my chicken in the instant pot with 2 tbsp of taco seasoning for this recipe. I just add ½ cup of water the the instant pot with the chicken and seasoning and cook for 20 minutes, let it slow relase and cool down before chopping.
You can also pan fry, grill or bake your chicken and season it however you like. Rotisserie chicken works too if you need to save time.
Boil the corn for 10 minutes. Then sear in a pan, on the grill or my personal favortie, over the gas stove for 2-3 minutes just to get those burnt char marks on the corn. Doing it over the gas burner is a great way to save time, but it does make a little mess.
If you are usuing frozen corn, defrost completely before adding it into a pan with a little bit of oil. Cook over medium high heat for about 5 minutes or until the corn is browned.
While the corn is cooling down, chop your veggies + chicken and make the dressing.
Using a bullet or emersion blender, blend together all of the ingredients for the dressing until smooth and pour into dressing cups.
Once the corn is cooled down, use a knife to cut the corn from the cob.
In each container add:
– 1½ cups of greens/lettuce
– 4oz of cooked chicken
– ¼ cup red pepper
– ¼ cup tomato
– ½ cup corn
– cotija cheese
– radishes + cilantro
– dressing cup

Tips for this Meal Prep

I paired this meal prep with the Sheet Pan Quesadillas. Both of these meals can be prepped and made in just about an hour, give or take!

Here is the exact or I prepared everything to get it done quickly and efficiently!

The very first thing I do if I am doing anything with chicken is, get that cooked in the instant pot about an hour before I actually start my meal prep. Making it in the insant pot takes about 3 minutes of my time and I don’t techinically count this as the hour of meal prep. I highly suggest giving this method a try to save time.
When it’s time to start my meal prep, I always start by chopping all of my veggies for each meal and setting them aside while I get to the cooking.
I started by making my scrambled eggs and then in the same pan, i cooked the bacon + bell peppers.
Next, I preheated the oven and started to build the sheet pan quesadillas.
After the quesadillas were in the oven I chopped the chicken and made the dressing.
This left me a few minutes to clean up a little before it was time to pull the quesadillas out of the oven.
While those were cooling down, I made the salad, put it away and moved on to cutting the quesadillas.
While the quesadillas were continuing to cool down, I finished my clean up.

That’s it!

Let me know if you have any questions or need help and don’t forget to tag me in your meal prep!

Make sure you are following along for more Meal Prep in 1 Hour!