Ground Chicken Taco Salad

This chile pepper gets its name from its origin. In Spanish, serrano is an adjective meaning “from the mountains” which is where it originated-in the mountains of Hildalgo, Mexico. The serrano is normally about twice as hot as Jalapeno (about 10,000 to 15,000 Scoville units).It is the second most popular chile pepper in Mexico. This chile is used mostly for salsas but can also be used in soups, sauces, chili or stews.Try these as a hotter substitute for Jalapeno.

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Serves: 2

Ingredients:

1 lb. Ground Chicken
2 tbsp. Oil
1 Envelope Taco Seasoning (I used hot and spicy taco seasoning)
2 – 3 oz. Baby Lettuce or Iceberg Lettuce, approx. 2 cups broken lettuce leaves
⅓ big Red Onion sliced, approx. ¾ cup when sliced
1 seeded and sliced chile pepper
20 pitted Ripe Olives, sliced or ⅓ – ½ cup sliced Ripe Black Olives
12 – 15 Grape Tomatoes cut into half, approx. ¾ cup
¾ – 1 cup canned Red Kidney Beans
¾ cup finely grated Cheddar Cheese
½ cup Thousand Island Salad Dressing
⅓ cup Salsa
2 tsp. Taco Seasoning

Preparation:

Heat oil in a pan and saute ground chicken with one envelope of taco seasoning until chicken is cooked. I used a stainless steel pan and it took about 10 – 12 minutes to cook ground chicken. If using a nonstick pan, can use less oil.
In a large bowl, toss lettuce, olives, tomatoes, onions,chile, ground chicken and keep aside.

Mix together thousand island dressing, salsa and taco seasoning (listed below salsa). Can add 1-2 tsp. of sugar which I left out. Also, you may not require all this dressing for this salad.

Take salad in a serving bowl, sprinkle cheddar cheese and pour desired dressing over it and serve. I like to serve dressing separately and one can add as much dressing as one prefers.

Note:

Adjust veggies in the salad to one’s preference. I used less veggies and more ground chicken as that is how we prefer.
I used Taco Seasoning to season ground chicken. A variation to this would be chili powder, garam masala and ginger garlic paste.

Slightly adapted from a recipe from myspicykitchen.net