This chopped salad recipe is easy to make, fresh, healthy, and hearty enough for dinner. What started as a last minute meal, thrown together by chopping a bunch of stuff I foraged from the fridge, has turned out to be one of our favorite weeknight dinners!

A rainbow of diced ingredients lined up in a large serving bowl, avocados, carrots, red onions, cucumbers, chicken, and cherry tomatoes. A pitcher of lemon dijon vinaigrette to the side.

I love dishes like this, where nutritious and delicious unite in one big bowl. This chopped salad is everything you want for lunch or dinner, in salad form! A smorgasbord of crunchy chopped veggies, creamy avocados, juicy sweet tomatoes, and tender tasty rotisserie chicken dressed in a luscious lemon dijon vinaigrette to tie it all together.

'Rotisserie chicken chopped salad' is what I've come to call this dish because I usually make it with a rotisserie chicken. I happen to LOVE a good rotisserie chicken and I also love the convenience of it. But you can, of course, make this salad with any cooked chicken.

serving bowl filled with colorful chopped salad of arugula, cherry tomatoes, chicken, cucumbers, carrots and red onons

Convenience is the name of the game here - a simple dish made with fresh, pure, easy-to-source ingredients. If it's 5pm and you decide you want this chopped salad for dinner, you can easily have dinner on the table by 6.

This easy, healthy, delicious chopped salad has won a place in our weekly repertoire, joining Quick Turkey Ragu, Apricot Glazed Salmon, and Roasted Fennel Tomatoes and White Beans, as the most cooked dishes in our house.

Bowl of chopped salad with chicken, cherry tomatoes, arugula, avocados, carrots and cucumbers, 3 forks and a small salt cellar behind the bowl

Chopped Salad Ingredients

These 7 ingredients are so simple and common that you may even have most of them in the house. But when you dice them up and put them together in a salad bowl, they become something special - a fantastic mix of contrasting tastes and textures that will make you want to put this chopped salad into your rotation!

Arugula or a mix of your favorite salad greens
Rotisserie chicken or any cooked chicken. Leftover grilled Aleppo Pepper Chicken is incredible in this salad!
Cucumbers - look for firm crisp hot house or mini Persian cucumbers
Carrots add great fiber and lots of crunch!
Cherry tomatoes or grape or cocktail tomatoes. Whichever tomatoes are the ripest and sweetest.
Red onion or white onion
Avocados - these are rich, creamy and heavenly in this salad

Dressing Ingredients

Fresh squeezed lemon juice or a good bottled juice such as Santa Cruz
Extra virgin olive oil
Dijon mustard
Garlic
Kosher salt or sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper

The lemon Dijon vinaigrette

This salad dressing is my favorite. It's bright, lemony, mustardy with a hint of garlic and just the right level of salt and pepper. I use this dressing on everything, including as a marinade for chicken, on hasselback potatoes, and on salad nicoise. And I'm using it here too because it's just the best.

Lemon vinaigrette in a mason jar with a sliced half lemon next to it and two lemons in the background with a jar of dijon mustard.

Chopped Salad

Making a chopped salad is really just as simple as it sounds. In this case, chop fresh vegetables and chicken into bite-sized pieces, toss everything in a big bowl with a good dressing, and enjoy a healthy, satisfying salad meal.

A rainbow of diced ingredients lined up in a large serving bowl, avocados, carrots, red onions, cucumbers, chicken, and cherry tomatoes. A stream of lemon dijon vinaigrette is being poured on top.

Chopped salad variations

Although I adore this chopped salad exactly as it is, I also love changing it up from time to time. The goal is always to keep it simple and use what I have on hand. Below are some of my favorite add-ins.

Canned artichoke hearts
Jarred roasted red peppers
Cubed roasted sweet potatoes or butternut squash
Leftover roasted broccoli or brussels sprouts
Dried cranberries or cherries
Diced fresh apples or pears

If you try this chopped salad recipe, I hope you'll come back to leave a star rating and a comment. I'd love to know what you think!