Salads

Tropical Rice & Chicken Salad

Recipe gone wrong!!!!!

I was at World Market one day looking for a few things and happened up on this Imperial Jasmine Rice Blend. It’s beautiful colors of purple, red and white made me want to grab it off the shelf and come up with a recipe using it. The jasmine rice is grown exclusively in the East of Thailand.

According to the package Imperial Jasmine Rice is a unique purple grain that is mixed with naturally perfumed white jasmine rice to give it an ideal texture while retaining its vibrant purple color and sweet flavor. (This is according to the package). Ya know purple is one of my favorite colors so I couldn’t wait to see what this rice was going to look like. I think it would also be beautiful under apiece of grilled salmon and I have just the new recipe to try using this beautiful rice

Years ago I made this tropical chicken salad for a church function of over a hundred ladies and all I remember about the luncheon was how much everyone enjoyed the salad so I decided to take that recipe and make some changes and like magic — a new recipe.

If you can’t find this rice just make it with a long grain white rice; that’s what the original recipe called for. Believe me, the salad is good, just don’t use purple rice. I would have remade this recipe using white rice but I pulled this out of my files when I knew I was going to be out of town.

DISCLAIMER:  (I’m not sure if this is the right word) I have made this salad many times with “white rice”. I think it is much prettier with the white as the purple tends to fade things and the longer it sat the purple rice turned the mayo and everything else a purplish color.  I took this to a meeting and a lot of people thought it was either purple cauliflower or purple cabbage. Out of about 80 people at this luncheon almost all my salad was left uneaten. I think it taste delicious with just plain ordinary white converted rice; so don’t go to the trouble to try and find the Jasmine Blend just use the rice you have in your pantry. I think the color purple must have put people off from trying this dish.

DSC_1944

DSC_1945

Put the rice in a sieve and rinse under cold water. See, some of the rice was white (jasmine) but I guess one of those other rices was a red rice and it turned everything my favorite (unappetizing though) color.

DSC_1950

I didn’t know all the rice would turn purple. I did rinse the rice again after cooking to get some of the starch off.

DSC_1951

Chop the celery and sliver the onions and add to the rice.

DSC_1954

Add in the pineapple, oranges and water chestnuts.

DSC_1958

The recipe called for red grapes but since the rice is dark I decided to add green grapes.

DSC_1960

Chop up the chicken and add to the salad.

DSC_1961

For the dressing you simply stir in some concentrated orange juice, mayonnaise, and a little salt and pepper.

DSC_1963

Pour all the dressing over top of salad and stir gently until everything is coated.

DSC_1973

Tropical Rice & Chicken Salad

Ingredients

  • 4 c. cooked jasmine rice blend
  • 3-4 boneless chicken breast I used thicken thighs
  • 1 large can chunk pineapple
  • 1 c. grapes red or green cut in half
  • 1 c. celery
  • 1/2 small red onion cut in very thin strips
  • 1 can water chestnuts cut in slivers
  • 1 can mandarin oranges drained
  • 1/2-3/4 c. slivered almonds toasted
  • 1/2 c. chopped fresh cilantro
  • lettuce leaves to serve on
  • Dressing:
  • 1 c. mayonnaise
  • 2 Tbsp. frozen orange juice concentrate
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1/2 tsp. black pepper

Instructions

  1. Bake the boneless chicken breast (or thighs) in 325° oven until done. Chop and set aside or refrigerate.  Drain the pineapple and mix with the grapes, celery, onion, water chestnuts, mandarin oranges, almonds, cilantro.
  2. Cook the rice according to package directions.  Mix the rice with the above chopped ingredients.
  3. For the dressing, mix themayonnaise, orange juice concentrate, salt and pepper.

Recipe Notes

Note:  I really think this salad would be good with an orange vinaigrette rather than the mayonnaise dressing.  Try it this way first and then make it the other way.

DSC_1970

No Comments

Leave a Reply

Recipe Rating




You Might Also Like