Vegan Chicken Salad Recipe

This Easy Vegan Chicken Salad recipe is fun to make and reminiscent of the dish you’ve enjoyed for years…except this one is made without meat or dairy! Vegetarian Chicken Salad recipes offer lots of flavor, healthy protein, and creaminess serve on sandwiches, salads, and more! Vegan Chicken Salad recipes are a great way to satisfy hungry appetites!

Cooking with Tempeh

Nothing says a basic veggie chicken salad recipe like tempeh. “Tempeh?” you say. Yes, Tempeh.

If you don’t know what it is, let alone how to pronounce it, here’s a little guide. Tempeh, pronounced TEM-pay, is basically fermented soybeans.

You can find Tempeh in the same area of your grocery store as tofu.

Nutritionally, tempeh packs a powerful nutritional punch: as much as 18 g of cholesterol-lowering protein per serving, riboflavin, magnesium, manganese and copper, and (saving the best for last) the fiber in tempeh binds to fat and cholesterol in the other foods you eat so less is absorbed.

Tempeh is like tofu in that it takes on the flavor of what it’s cooked with. You can marinade it, grill it, and then slice and serve over a salad for a yummy, protein-packed dinner.

Let’s begin with a quick trip to the grocery store.

I sometimes have a hard time staying focused in a section like this, but we try to stick to the shopping list.

How to Make Vegan Chicken Salad

Here are the steps to make this vegan best Chicken Salad recipe! When you get your tempeh home, remove it from the package and chop it up. Here’s what that can look like:

Place the tempeh on a cutting board.

We are going to steam the tempeh, but for this recipe, first it needs to be cut into cubes.

You can always break these cubes into a smaller pieces, but for now, nice large cubes will work just fine.

After chopping the tempeh into cubes, drop them in a steaming basket over a saucepan. Then I steam the tempeh for about 15 – 20 minutes. This helps the tempeh to soften and bind together (and not become crumbly).

What are the Ingredients in Chicken Salad?

You’re going to love the combination of flavors in this vegan sandwich recipe. Let’s start with the meatless chicken salad ingredients!

It has everything from granny smith apples to carrots and craisins!

While your tempeh is steaming, chop the rest of your ingredients, like the celery, carrots, and green onion, into a bowl.

This is an important step because, well, you’ll see in the next photo.

Once the tempeh is steamed, use tongs to place the hot tempeh in the bowl with your chopped ingredients. That way the heat from the tempeh will gently cook and soften things like carrots and green onions.

You’ll still get a nice crunch from the fresh veggies, but not too much.

Finally, stir the ingredients for the sauce. We want that tempeh well-coated so it can take on the flavors of everything around it.

Then once the tempeh has cooled enough, simply pour the sauce over and stir. I like to Salt and pepper to a desired taste. Serve this over greens or on toasted buns as a sandwich!

Vegetarian Chicken Salad

This is basically a chickenless chicken salad recipe that can be used as a spread for sandwiches. You can also serve this vegan mock chicken salad recipe over a bed of greens or with crackers.

We love a good vegetarian chicken salad sandwich. Of course, you’ll also want to try our vegan lentil burgers recipe. It’s gluten-free and so easy to make! We love it!

Also, we have a delicious Vegan Egg Salad recipe too! I know. How can an egg salad sandwich be vegan? Trust me, you won’t miss eggs or dairy at all in that veg salad sandwich recipe! Even my mom, who has eaten egg salads her entire life, really loved this recipe!

If you’d like to try something different make tofu chicken salad by using pressed cubed tofu in place of the tempeh. Alternatively, you can make jackfruit chicken salad by using jackfruit in place of tempeh too!

That’s it for this fake chicken salad recipe!

I hope you love this recipe for vegan chicken salad as much as we do! If you make it, be sure and snap a photo and share it with me using #namelymarly on Instagram. We love seeing your photos!

Enjoy!