avocado salad with charred veggies over grilled chicken

With this avocado salad with charred veggies & grilled chicken you’ll enjoy the ease of summer grilling while embracing all the amazing tastes, colors, and textures the season has to offer!

Taking back the control food may have over you is easy to do with foods like this because you’ll get so excited over the different tastes and flavors!

Enjoy perfectly seasoned grilled chicken with a Mexican-flair topped with creamy, ripe avocados and garden-fresh, charred veggies in a lime, garlic dressing.
Be still my heart!

how to make avocado salad with charred veggies & grilled chicken

This avocado salad is so easy to make and I have lots of tips on using avocados in this post. The salad does well if it’s made a couple of hours before eating so that the flavors meld together. Don’t make it more than a day before eating or the avocado will start to brown and it will distract you from appreciating all of the beautiful colors of summer veggies!

If you make the avocado salad at the same time as the chicken, you can grill the chicken and veggies at the same time.

For the chicken

• Slice the chicken horizontally and marinating the chicken a couple of hours ahead of time.
• When it’s time to grill, throw it on the grill rack and cook for approximately 5 minutes per side (depending on the thickness of chicken breast).

To char the veggies

• Leave the peppers whole and place them on the grill or you can slice them into large pieces, discarding seeds.
• Slice the onions in half, take off the out peel and then pull some of the layers apart. I’ll typically place 2 or 3 layered halves on the grill rack.

For the avocados

• Cut the avocados in half and remove the pit.
• Cube or dice the avocado (here’s a helpful tutorial on how to cube an avocado).

customizing avocado salad to your needs

Definitely feel free to customize this avocado salad. I always see it as an opportunity to clean out the fridge. For example, I had some zucchini I wanted to use so I added that to the grill and into the salad!

Here are some other ideas of veggies to grill and throw in:

• Cucumbers
• Spinach (probably not a grill item)
• Corn
• Mushrooms
• Romaine (you can even char this)
• Squash

If you add a number of veggies, you may need to add more lime juice, salt and even a little olive oil to the overall salad.

how to store avocados

Once you’ve cut into an avocado, it’ll eventually turn brown when exposed to air. To slow down the browning, cover a cut avocado half with plastic wrap or go triple-level protection: leave the pit in, sprinkle on some lemon or lime juice, and then cover with plastic wrap. The acidity from the lime juice in this avocado salad recipe will help preserve the avocado and slow down the browning process.

With that said, don’t store that cut avocado for much longer than a day.

how to tell if an avocado is ripe

According to epicurious.com, the skin on a Hass generally goes from green to nearly black when ripe. That said, color isn’t the best indicator of ripeness.

The best way to tell? Cradle the avocado in the palm of your hand—emphasis on the palm, not fingertips—and give it a gentle squeeze. If it feels soft and gives a little, it’s ready.

Avoid avocados that feel mushy or have dents and dips in the skin. A bright-green avocado that’s nowhere near soft is better than an overripe one any day.

what are the benefits of avocado?

Avocados have many health benefits and are a great source of vitamins C, E, K, and B-6, as well as riboflavin, niacin, folate, pantothenic acid, magnesium, and potassium. They also provide lutein, beta-carotene, and omega-3 fatty acids.

are avocados good for weight loss?

Unprocessed, whole foods are good for weight loss. Because avocados are relatively high in fat, they are also high in calories which can impact your weight, especially if eaten in excess. On Fork Freedom, I focus on eating nutrient-dense foods versus counting calories but do recognize that weight loss is a common goal.

If you are trying to cut calories, feel free to tweak this salad to your needs. You can add fewer avocados and more veggies if you like. It’s highly customizable—you CAN’T go wrong!

can you store cut avocado at room temperature?

For avocados with thinner peels, it may be easier to peel the avocado once it has been cut in half before slicing or cubing. You can store unripe avocados at room temperature for up to a few days. When an avocado is ripe, you can slow the aging by storing it in the refrigerator for a day or two.

TIP: I like to buy some ripe, softer avocados, and hard ones at the same time. I’ll leave the hard ones out on the counter in the fruit bowl to ripen while we first consume the softer ones (stored in the fridge so they keep). By the time you’ve eaten the soft ones, the hard ones are ready to go!
BOOM!

is avocado salad keto-friendly?

Avocado salad is the friendliest salad in town – complying with keto, paleo, Whole30 and Isagenix!

other low-carb dinner recipes you’ll love:

• Korean bbq salmon with Gochujang-glaze
• loaded burger bowls with special dressing
• sloppy joes on crispy sweet potatoes with pickled onions

other chicken recipes you’ll enjoy:

• easy chicken bruschetta
• sesame chicken with “fried” cauliflower rice
• butternut squash noodles with chicken & cream sauce (whole30, paleo)
• keto chicken “sandwich” (copycat Chick-fil-A”)

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