Southwest Style Cobb Salad

Our Southwestern Cobb Salad is loaded with bold flavors, crunchy textures, and tons of fresh and flavorful ingredients for a salad that’s as mouthwatering as it is filling. We love how hearty and protein-rich traditional Cobb salads are, and this one is no different. Topped with sweet and smoky honey chipotle chicken, black beans, hard-boiled eggs, crispy bacon, and queso fresco, you can easily serve this salad as a satisfying main course.

If you’re looking for dinner-quality salads like this one, you’ll love our BBQ Chicken Salad and Loaded Salmon Salad, too!

To top it all off, we added fresh cilantro and lime to our homemade ranch for a creamy, cool dressing to bring it all together. Everything for this Southwest-style cobb salad comes together for a restaurant-quality salad at home that’s easy to meal prep for an easy weekday lunch or weeknight dinner.

What Does Southwest Style Mean (pertaining to food)?

Recipes that have a Southwest style pick up elements of Mexican, Native American, and ranch-style cuisines that are popular in the Southwestern United States, like Texas, Arizona, and southern California.

Blending all of these flavors and ingredients creates a unique style of cooking that’s bold, smoky, and often spicy, featuring staples like corn, beans, chili peppers, avocado, cilantro, and lime.

How to Make Our Southwest Style Cobb Salad

Chipotle Chicken Ingredients

Chipotle Chicken Process

1. Pour honey and chipotle in adobe into a small mixing bowl. Whisk together.
2. Add chicken and toss together until chicken is completely and evenly coated.

Cilantro Ranch Ingredients

Cilantro Ranch Process

3. In a blender, combine dressing cilantro and lime juice. Blend until smooth.

Salad Ingredients

Assembly Process

4. Combine romaine and 2/3 dressing into a large salad bowl and toss together until evenly coated.
5. Top romaine with piles of the remaining ingredients.

6. Drizzle with remaining dressing and finish with black pepper.
7. Toss together and serve.

Lettuce Washing Tips

To easily wash lettuce for this Cobb salad (and any other chopped salad), follow these simple steps:

• Chop lettuce into bite-sized pieces with a clean knife and cutting board.
• Add the chopped lettuce to a bowl of cold water and let the leaves soak for a few minutes, gently agitating them with your hand to loosen any dirt or particles on the leaves.
• If you have a salad spinner, add chopped lettuce leaves to the spinner basket and let cold water run over them to remove any debris. Then, spin the leaves until most of the water has been removed.
• Without a salad spinner, add the leaves to a strainer, run under cold water for a few minutes, then let most of the water run off. Gently dry with a clean cloth or paper towel until mostly dry.

Mix-In Variations

• For the chicken: Instead of the honey chipotle chicken, use any seasoned chicken breast or swap chicken with carne asada or grilled skirt steak.
• Cheese: Instead of queso fresca, use cojita, shredded pepperjack for a spicy kick, or colby for a milder flavor.
• Veggies: The combinations of veggies you can add to this Southwest salad are endless. Try diced bell peppers, jalapenos, red onion (fresh or pickled), small broccoli florets, diced carrots, or roasted sweet potatoes.
• Dressing: We love the fresh, cool flavor and creaminess the cilantro lime ranch adds to this salad, but you can use store-bought cilantro lime ranch or a salsa ranch as well.
• Crunchy toppings: Fritos are our favorite topping as they add the perfect crunch and salty flavor. You can swap them for crushed tortilla chips, crunchy tortilla strips, or add toasted and salted pumpkin seeds.

Prep and Make Ahead Instructions

To eat Southwestern Cobb Salads on a busy weeknight, or to prep them for a filling and easy work lunch, you can do a lot of the prep work ahead of time.

Prepping the Produce and Add-Ins

Store all prepped produce and add-ins in separate containers if prepped beforehand, then just add to the salad before serving.

• Cook whole corn and cut the kernels from the cob ahead of time. They’ll stay fresh in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.
• Chop and wash lettuce up to 3 days ahead of time. Store washed lettuce in an airtight container or bag with a paper towel to soak up any excess moisture.
• Wash and slice cucumbers, radishes, tomatoes, and green onions up to three days ahead of time and store in separate airtight containers in the refrigerator.
• Make the bacon up to four days ahead of time. Cook it until crispy, then store it in the refrigerator in an airtight container. For longer storage, you can cook and freeze bacon for up to a month.
• Hard-boil eggs and store in the refrigerator for up to 1 week.

Make the Dressing Ahead

The homemade ranch stays fresh in the refrigerator for up to seven days, so it’s easy to make this well before putting your salad together. Once you blend in the fresh cilantro and lime juice, it should stay good for a few days in the refrigerator.

Meal Prep the Chipotle Chicken

The chicken and the chipotle honey sauce can both be made ahead of time, or combined and stored in the refrigerator for up to 3-4 days. For an easy and delicious way to cook your chicken, try our air fryer chicken breast method!

How to Store Leftovers

If you’re expecting leftovers, you can store everything separately as listed in the meal prep instructions above. To keep the leftover salad crisp and fresh, it’s best to store the lettuce, cucumbers, radishes, corn, and green onions separate from the juicy tomatoes, dressing, chicken, and extra ingredients like the Fritos, bacon, and hard-boiled eggs.

Toss a paper towel in an air-tight container with the salad and veggies, and keep each of the other ingredients in their own container in the refrigerator.

Tips for Packing Our Southwest Style Cobb Salad To-Go!

This salad is perfect for packing on the go, taking to work, or prepping as a mason jar salad! To keep everything fresh, you’ll want to add the ingredients to a jar or container in layers.

• Dressing on the bottom
• Then hearty ingredients like chicken, corn, beans, cucumbers, and cherry tomatoes
• Cheese and eggs can go in the middle layer
• Add lettuce, cilantro, and green onions on top so they stay away from the high-moisture ingredients at the bottom.
• Keep Fritos and bacon in separate containers, adding them right before eating, and slice your avocado just before as well.

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