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!

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

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!