It doesn’t have quite the expected salty-sweet-sour-hot flavor of most Thai dishes, but no matter. This crunchy-munchy salad with a tangy, creamy peanut butter dressing from The Dirty, Lazy, Keto No Time to Cook Cookbook is totally delicious! It’s also shockingly fast to prepare, provided you have pre-cooked chicken breast. But even if you don’t, it’s still crazy-simple, and it promises results you’ll want to repeat again and again. We like it so much, we double the dressing so we can have a future salad with even more ease. Author Stephanie Laska sheds some background on this tasty dish:“In my “previous life” (when I weighed close to 300 pounds), I frequented Panera Bread for lunch. I ordered the Spicy Thai Salad with Chicken (thinking I was being healthy), a giant Candy Cookie (knowing I wasn’t), and washed both down with a Diet Coke (which made up for indiscretions). Little did I know that my meal contained about 100 grams of carbs! That’s not even counting the dozen bagels I bought on my way out the door. These days, when I want a fast and casual lunch, I make this Thai Time Crunch Salad.”[Reprinted with permission from The Dirty, Lazy, Keto No Time to Cook Cookbook: 100 Easy Recipes to Save Money & Time by Stephanie Laska, MEd, and William Laska (Adams Media, 2021).]Click HERE to read our book review.
Ingredients List
DRESSING
- 1 Tbsp no-sugar-added peanut butter
- 1 Tbsp soy sauce (or tamari)
- 1 Tbsp water
- 5 (1-gram) packets 0g net carbs sweetener
- 2 tsp apple cider vinegar
- 1/3 cup sesame oil
- 1/8 tsp ground ginger
- 1/2 tsp sesame seeds
- 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
- 1/4 cup salted peanuts, crushed
SALAD
- 6 cups shredded cabbage mix (green cabbage, red cabbage, carrot blend)
- 1/4 cup chopped green onion
- 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
- 1½ cups shredded Grab and Go Chicken Breasts (recipe below) or cooked chicken breast, cold
Instructions
- In a medium bowl, whisk together all Dressing ingredients except crushed peanuts. Cover and set aside.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine cabbage mix, green onion, and cilantro and stir. Add chicken and mix again.
- Add Dressing to Salad. Toss to fully coat.
- Divide equally among four bowls. Top with equal amounts of crushed peanuts.
- Serve chilled.
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So delicious, quick and easy! We are touring in our class B RV and meals like this really make a difference! we stopped at Costco and got a rotisserie chicken for $4.99, I made this recipe and my man thinks I am a chef!
It was great! Quick and easy! I went to Trader Joes and bought seasoned roasted chicken slices already cooked and got a bag of the three shredded cabbage that already had cilantro in it. I added a little more cilantro and green onion. I had plenty of leftovers for a quick snack or lunch!!
Perfect weeknight dinner. Quick, easy, tasty. I shredded a head of Napa cabbage instead of the cabbage mix and it was great.
This is fabulous. Didn’t have chicken so I just ate the salad and it hit the spot.
what’s w/t soy. soy is not recommended by Keto.
While the recipes we create don’t include soy sauce, occasionally some recipes, such as this one from a cookbook we like,includes a small amount of an ingredient for flavor that isn’t optimally keto (a bit of onion for example). However it remains keto in macros and also is mostly epic keto ingredients. If you are uncomfortable eating soy sauce, substitute it with tamari or coconut aminos. But this is a wonderful recipe.
Hi just reading comments, they soy sauce could always be switched out with coconut aminos. I think it would be fantastic!
Yes!
I agree the recipe is easy and delicious.
I liked this salad so much, on a warm, summer day, I made it two times in a row. Absolutely delicious, with or without chicken. I’ve already bought the ingredients to make it again! It is so easy to put together and great for the warm months ahead. And the bit at the bottom about baking chicken breasts produces moist and delicious chicken.
I made this as a side dish so my husband and I enjoyed it for 3 days and it lasted in the refrigerator just fine. He really liked the peanut dressing.