This is one tasty salad.   It is a nice salad to use up leftover chicken or turkey, which many people have around this time of year.  It is also a good one for summer picnics or potlucks as it can be left out at room temperature for awhile as there is no mayo to spoil.

This recipe can easily be adapted to be gluten free (make sure noodles and soy sauce are gluten free), vegetarian or vegan (leave out protein and for vegan make sure other ingredients are safe).  I am also thinking that this would be good using the cooked tofu from our Broccoli Tofu Stir Fry recipe.  I would have put a link to that here, but I forget how to do it.

First for the dressing:

whisk together 1/4 cup of gluten free soy sauce, Tamari or I use Kikkoman, 2 Tbsp rice vinegar, 1Tbsp veg oil, 1 tsp sugar, 1 clove garlic (minced) and 1 tsp ginger root peeled and finely grated.  Set aside.

These are the noodles we use since we can easily find them.  You can use any Soba Noodle (Japanese Buckwheat Noodles) that you would prefer.  Make sure it says gluten free if you can’t have gluten.  Boil 3/4 lbs of noodles according to the package directions, drain and rinse with cold water.

Toss with the dressing.

Add about 1 lb of cooked cubed or shredded chicken (or leftover turkey if it is the holidays).

I also add a few thinly sliced scallions (I use just the green onion tops) and about a cup or so of chopped sweet bell peppers.  For the peppers I use whatever colours I have on hand, about a full pepper or two small ones.

Toss all of this together with the sauce and noodles and serve warm or cover and chill to serve later.

Best served the day of prepping as the noodles will soak up the dressing and it will be a little dryer.  However, all of the flavour is still there, just give it a little toss to recoat everything.

The original source was an Everyday Food magazine from many years ago, 2008 or 2009.  I adapted the recipe to our liking, aka Evie’s liking.  I believe the original used a head of thinly shredded purple or red cabbage, which would add more colour and crunch.  We didn’t like that as much and the shredded cabbage was a little harder for Evie to eat.  She was only about a year old when we started making this.  She loved it and would eat it up, with all the cabbage picked out, so I stopped adding the cabbage and added more peppers since she liked them.

Now that I have posted this I have to go finish cleaning out the cupboards.  We did the food cupboards yesterday.  Now I have a few very stuffed cupboard of spices and teas that is in desperate need of a good cull and clean. I shouldn’t procrastinate on that any longer.