Karaage chicken salad is a delicious way to use freshly made or leftover karaage chicken! It’s a crowd-pleaser salad with protein. All you need to make this salad is basic ingredients that you most likely already have at home. Top the salad with homemade chilli dressing and crushed peanuts and you’ve got a delicious salad ready to go!
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What is Karaage Chicken Salad?
Just in case you don’t know what Karaage is, Karaage is Japanese fried chicken and it is pronounced like Kah-rah-a-geh. Karaage salad is a Japanese way of remake or recycling delicious karaage chicken on its own leftover(if any) and to create a nutrient balanced salad. Dressed with sweet vinegar dressing, it turns into a delicious summer salad!
You will Love this Karaage chicken salad
Karaage chicken itself is already delicious on its own.
You can eat plenty of green leaves with crunchy Karaage which goes well with plain white rice.
Ingredients to gather
Karaage pieces
Green salad leaves
Cherry tomatoes
Red onion
Chilli dressing ingredients – lemon juice, fish sauce, garlic, chilli and sugar
Garnish ingredients such as crushed peanuts and coriander(cilantro). You would have never seen coriander(cilantro) used in any of my recipes. Because I am one of those people who can taste coriander like stinky bug or soup. I wish I can.
Ingredients Substitution
Don’t despair if you can not get some of the ingredients. This recipe is versatile. For example, if you don’t have tomatoes, you can replace them with red capsicums. I can’t eat cilantro so I replace it with mitsuba or shiso usually. Garnishing peanuts can be replaced with walnut, or sesame seeds etc. Let your imagination run wild to create a delicious salad.
How to Make This Salad?
If you don’t have chicken karaage leftover already, you need to make Karaage chicken first. See my chicken karaage recipe. In short, you need marinated chicken thighs with soy sauce, sake and ginger etc for 20 minutes. Dusted with potato starch “katakuriko”. Then deep frying those chicken pieces till golden brown. Prepare green salad leaves, cherry tomatoes and red onion, and make chilli dressing. Toss the chicken and salad leaves, cherry tomatoes and red onions, all together, pour the dressing over and garnish with crushed peanuts and coriander or chopped scallions.
Tips & Tricks
- If you are making Karaage from scratch for this salad, make it ahead. We need to cool the chicken pieces down completely because we don’t want to wilt the green salad leaves.
- Chill salad ingredients, and dressings well. Toss all together just before serving.
- Spin the salad leaves to remove excess water off the leaves because we don’t want to dilute the dressing.
What to serve with?
People usually think a salad is a side dish, however because of the Karaage, this salad can be served as a main dish. So I would serve this with plain white Japanese rice, with soup dishes such as Miso soup, Egg drop soup, clear soup, Kabocha squash soup or edamame potage.
FAQ
A: It is best served freshly tossed all together just before serving. You can, however, store karaage chicken, salad ingredients and dressings separately. The marinated chicken thigh will keep for a month in the freezer before cooking. Thawed at room temperature, dusted with katakuriko and deep fry.
More Chicken Recipes to Check out
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Recipe Measurement
To change the measurements to US customary, click “US Customary” underneath the ingredients list. This converts from Metric units to the customary units used in the USA.
Karaage Chicken Salad
Ingredients
Chilli Dressing
- 1 finely chopped chilli sliced (seeds removed)
- 1/4 tsp garlic clove finely chopped *2
- 1 tbs lemon juice
- 1/2 tbs sesame seed oil
- 1 tsp fish sauce
- 1 tsp sesame seeds
- 1 tbs sugar
Green Salad Leaves
- 2 cups Salad leaves
- 6 cherry tomatoes quartered
- 2 tbsp sliced red onion
Kara age chicken
- 1 chicken thigh fillet Karaage * 1
Toppings
- 1 tbsp Crushed peanuts
- chopped Coriander *3
Instructions
- In a small bowl, mix together all the chilli dressing ingredients then set aside.
- Wash the green salad leaves and spin to remove the excess water off.
- Cut the tomatoes into quarter and set aside.
- Slice the red onion thinly and soak in water for 10 minutes.
- Drain the water and spin the sliced onion to remove excess water completely.
- In a large bowl, place the salad leaves, cherry tomatoes, sliced red onion, and karaage chicken.
- Pour the chilli dressing over the salad.
- Garnish the salad with crushed peanuts and your choice of garnish.
Really healthy and balanced meal
Yes and super delicious 😀