A warm winter salad with crunchy fresh veggies, plant based chicken tenders and a spiced sesame orange salad dressing. A totally delicious but easy vegan lunch idea.

This winter salad is so simple to put together, healthy and a whole meal in itself.  I’ve been making this on repeat throughout January.  Mostly as an antithesis to my Christmas excess but also because it’s bloody delicious!  We’ve got crunchy red cabbage, toasted nuts and seeds, crisp lettuce, herb roasted potatoes, creamy avocado and protein packed plant based chicken tenders.  All of this is tossed together with a spiced sesame orange dressing.  Salads honestly don’t get better than this.

I do love a warm salad too, it’s that whole hot/cold contrast thing.  Like warm pie and ice cream.  I thought about warming the dressing for this vegan chicken salad as well.  But I didn’t want to wilt the delicate leaves.  If you’re using a more robust salad leaf like frisee (curled endive) or radicchio they’d stand up well to a warm salad dressing.

The chicken bit!

These Tindle tenders are REALLY GOOD.  Such a crisp, crunchy coating and nice ‘meaty’ texture inside.  The company, a food tech startup, was founded in 2020 and are hard at work developing and commercialising delicious, innovative and sustainable plant based foods.  The chicken tenders are currently available in the UK in Morrisons in the frozen section along with burgers, wings, and nuggets.  Their burgers are also found in the chilled section along with their garlic and herb kyiv.

Their burgers were absolutely perfect with this plant based chicken katsu curry!

How to make a delicious and easy vegan salad:

Start with the potatoes as these need to be roasted in the oven.  I just toss them with some oil, salt and pepper and whatever herbs I’ve got – fresh or dried.  Sage, rosemary, thyme and oregano – and a combination of these – all work perfectly with potato wedges.  Cook them for 35-40 minutes in a hot oven.

For the last 15 minutes of cooking the potato wedges pop the vegan chicken in the oven too.  I’ve used Tindle chicken tenders and the pack recommends frying them over oven baking but I’d got the oven on anyway and to me they tasted just great oven baked!  The pack also recommends cooking them at a higher temperature for less time but I didn’t want to burn the potatoes and they were perfectly cooked and crispy at a lower temp for a slightly longer time.

While that’s all cooking toast the nuts and seeds.  I use a dry frying pan over a medium high heat and toss the pan pretty regularly.  I find it easier to do this in a pan rather than the oven so I can keep my eye on them as they do burn easily!

Grate the zest from an orange and put into a jar with lid.  Segment the orange.  If you don’t know how to do this, here’s a good tutorial.  Squeeze the juice from the membrane remnants into the jar with the zest.

Put the remaining dressing ingredients in a jar, pop on the lid and shake vigorously.

Shred the red cabbage and tear the lettuce into chunks.  Put both into a large bowl with the orange segments and some diced avocado.

Dressing the salad:

Once the potatoes are cooked add those to the bowl along with the nuts and seeds and pour on most of the dressing.  Transfer the salad to serving bowls.  Cut the ‘chicken’ tenders in half and place on top of the salad. Drizzle over the remainder of the dressing and serve.

Can this salad be made in advance:

Yes and no.  The cabbage can be shredded, nuts toasted and dressing made.  You could even cook the potato wedges and chicken in advance, though they’ll both be less crunchy when they’re cold.  But don’t dress the salad until you’re ready to eat it.

Looking for even more easy vegan lunch ideas?  Try these:

Roast Cauliflower Quinoa Salad

Cheese and Potato Pies

Warm Blackberries with Cream Cheese on Toast

Carbonara Ramen

Roasted New Potato Salad

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