Copycat Zupas Strawberry Harvest Chicken Salad

Looking for a salad that makes you look forward to it? This copycat ZUpas Strawberry Harvest Chicken Salad is packed full of good-for-you ingredients, a tangy (and easy) strawberry vinaigrette, and lots of chicken!

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Tyson Foods, Inc. and Pinnacle Foods Group LLC. All opinions and text are entirely my own.

I’ve discussed my love for a small soup, salad, and sandwich chain based in Utah called Zupas before.

Even though we haven’t lived in Utah for over a year, I have yet to find a similar restaurant that I enjoy as much. As such, I often make copycat versions of my favorite dishes there.

Last time we were in Utah, I had the Strawberry Harvest Chicken Salad, and I LOVED it. So fresh and tasty. The ingredients were simple enough, so I thought I’d try and make it at home.

One of the things I loved most about it was the dressing. When I looked on their website, it was called a strawberry champagne dressing. Well, I don’t drink champagne, but when I looked for similar recipes for champagne dressings, most of them didn’t…so, I figured I could make a similar dressing, sans champagne. It was smooth yet had a vinegar taste to it. I thought I could make a simpler version by combining strawberries and Wish-Bone® Italian dressing.

It was so easy – I just put them in a blender together, and viola – amazing dressing. It was almost good enough to eat by the spoonful (almost being the key word.)

This salad is so fresh and tasty. It’s definitely a salad that can be eaten as a main dish – and that you’ll look forward to eating. It has apples, strawberries, pecans, cranberries, shredded fontina cheese…it just seems like such a fancy salad to me.

I loved the convenience of using Tyson® Grilled and Ready chicken strips. They are pre-cooked and you just need to warm them up. I cooked them in a little olive oil, salt, and pepper, which was super simple. They were so juicy and flavorful, and they were the perfect addition to this tasty salad.

I picked up all these ingredients during a recent trip to Walmart – it was so easy to find all the ingredients I needed. I knew that I wanted to have pecans and cranberries, and I was thrilled when I saw (near the salad toppings) a combo package of candied pecans AND cranberries. It made it so convenient. I love when I can go to the store and easily find all the ingredients I need, and that was certainly the case with this salad.

This is an easy and fast salad to make, but it tastes like a million bucks. I couldn’t believe how well the salad dressing turned out especially – it was the simplest dressing I think I’ve ever made! I loved using Wish-Bone®Italian Dressing – it doesn’t have any high fructose corn syrup (which is important to me), and it was filled with robust seasonings and flavor that eliminated any need for me to add any of my own. Combining it with the strawberries was the perfect idea!

Just grab your ingredients, toss them in a bowl, and you’ll have a tasty, protein-packed salad ready to go in less than 10 minutes!

Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Tyson Foods, Inc. and Pinnacle Foods Group LLC. All opinions are entirely my own.