Nashville Hot Chicken Salad

Name: Nashville Hot Chicken Salad | Taylor Farms
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 1 Taylor Farms Nashville Hot Mini Chopped Kit; 1 avocado; 4 ounces blue cheese crumbles; 1 (8 ounce) boneless, skinless chicken breast; 2 eggs; 1 cup panko breadcrumbs; 3/4 cups all purpose flour; 1/2 Tbsp garlic powder; 1 tsp smoked paprika; 1/2 tsp salt; 1/4 tsp pepper; cooking spray

Want to fire up your day and get your engine revving? Dive into this recipe for a kick of Nashville without having to travel all the way to Music City. The Nashville Hot Chicken Salad is a fun, easy, scrumptious dish offering a modern take on the hot Nashville flavors that are taking the entire country by storm.

It all starts with Nashville hot breaded chicken strips packed with the flavors of garlic and smoked paprika. But don’t run for your ice water just yet—the heat is balanced with the cool, refreshing textures of avocado and blue cheese crumbles atop the fresh Nashville Hot Mini Chopped Salad Kit. This kit comes with a bed of fresh Romaine lettuce and dill pickle-seasoned crispy cucumbers, topped with our creamy Nashville Hot ranch dressing.

Ingredients

1 Taylor Farms Nashville Hot Mini Chopped Kit
1 avocado
4 ounces blue cheese crumbles
1 (8 ounce) boneless, skinless chicken breast
2 eggs
1 cup panko breadcrumbs
3/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 Tbsp garlic powder
1 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
cooking spray

Directions

Preheat oven to 400˚F.
Pat chicken breast dry with a paper towel. Season both sides with salt and pepper.
In a shallow dish, whisk together flour, garlic powder, smoked paprika, salt and pepper. In a second dish, beat together the eggs. In a third dish, add panko breadcrumbs.
Dredge chicken into the flour mixture, then in the eggs until fully coated, and then into panko mixture.
Spray the chicken breast with cooking spray on each side and bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until chicken is cooked through in the middle.
Let rest and then cut into strips and add to Nashville Hot Mini Chopped Salad Kit. Top with sliced avocado and crumbled blue cheese. Enjoy!

Did Nashville Hot Chicken Really Come From Nashville?

Short answer: yes. But before catching on as a national phenomenon, Nashville Hot Chicken got its start as a lovers’ revenge story. Yes, you heard right. The colorful story goes that this delicious, fiery recipe for spicy chicken was originally devised as a revenge scheme in the 1930s by a jilted girlfriend who wanted to give her cavorting boyfriend something to think about. According to the most common version of the story, her boyfriend, Thornton Prince III, liked to stay out late drinking and partying with his group of buddies. Apparently, one of his nights of escapades was just too much for her, and she decided to teach him an important lesson.

As he awoke from a very late night of who-knows-what, he was greeted by his (seemingly) nurturing girlfriend cooking chicken for him. However, unbeknownst to him, she had coated the chicken in cayenne pepper and other cajun spices. To her chagrin, the scheme backfired. He loved the new hair-raising spicy recipe for chicken, and joined with his brothers to formulate their own version. The rest is history, as they say, and after selling the chicken to eager patrons at their own “BBQ Chicken Shack” cafe in Nashville, the culinary concoction spread like wildfire.

See all of our recipes for Salads with Chicken.