Our Loaded Chicken & Broccoli Salad is a delicious main-dish salad you can enjoy all week long. As with any “loaded” recipe, we start by adding smoky bacon for flavoring—a little goes a long way. The salad is packed with antioxidant-rich broccoli and scallions, calcium-rich Cheddar cheese and tender chicken for protein. The creamy ranch-style sauce has tanginess from yogurt and cider vinegar and richness from mayo; dill adds a balancing freshness. Keep reading for our expert tips on cooking perfectly crispy bacon, how to choose and prep your broccoli and more!

Tips from the EatingWell Test Kitchen

These are the key tips we learned while developing and testing this recipe in our Test Kitchen to make sure it works, tastes great and is good for you too! 

• Since the broccoli isn’t being cooked, cut it into small pieces so that it’s easier to eat.
• For this recipe, it is important to choose broccoli that is deep green and firm; avoid any crowns or stems that appear flimsy or floppy.
• Start cooking the bacon in a cold pan. This method allows the fat to render slowly as the pan heats up, resulting in crisper bacon.
• We opted for chicken tenders because they cook quickly, but you can also use chicken breasts or even a store-bought rotisserie chicken to save time.

Nutrition Notes

• Chicken tenders carry the same nutrition power as chicken breast, but in a faster-cooking size. Chicken is rich in muscle-building protein and contains heart-healthy nutrients such as potassium and magnesium. Chicken is also a source of choline, which is essential for memory, cognition and mood. 
• Many salads with a creamy base use just mayonnaise, but we like to cut the mayo in half and add Greek yogurt for added protein and calcium. If you choose a yogurt with live and active cultures, you’ll also benefit from probiotics, which are excellent for your gut health. 
• Broccoli is a cruciferous vegetable that contains a compound called sulforaphane, which has been shown to reduce the risk of cancer development. There is more sulforaphane in raw broccoli than in cooked, so this salad is perfect for getting more of this healthy nutrient. 
• Cheddar cheese has some pretty impressive health benefits. Hard cheeses like Cheddar provide more calcium than soft cheeses because of their lower water content. Cheddar is also lower in lactose because it’s typically aged longer, which helps to reduce the lactose, making this a great choice for those with difficulty digesting this sugar.