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Chicken Caesar Pasta salad is fun twist on the classic! Fresh romaine tossed with chicken, cherry tomatoes, shredded parmesan cheese, croutons and a vegetable pasta adds a fun new texture!
Light and tasty, this Salad makes a great spring or summer meal. Pair it with Breadsticks, Salad and top it off with Tiramisu!
Chicken Caesar Pasta Salad
Caesar salad is one of my all time favorite salads. It is such a simple combination of salad, croutons, parmesan cheese and a spectacular dressing. Being able to turn my favorite salad into a meal my whole family loves is just golden. The noodles give it a bit more depth and helps to fill you up. Adding tender, juicy, seasoned chicken adds flavor and nutrient dense protein. I love the addition the fresh tomatoes make. It gives the chicken caesar salad a bit of brightness. Your whole family is going to love this salad turned main dish!
You may not think that adding pasta and lettuce together works, but it totally does. They work together to create a fabulous texture you are going to love. You can try it out in my Kale Pasta Salad or BLT Avocado Salad too. This is a perfect dish for a summer picnic or potluck. Or serve at a brunch or special lunch. How ever you serve it, you are going to love it.
Ingredients for Caesar Pasta Salad
Save time and use rotisserie chicken from the store, it can be a total busy night life saver.
- Lettuce: Use romaine lettuce for good nutrition and crunch.
- Rotini Pasta: The swirly pasta is perfect to hold onto the dressing.
- Chicken: Cooked and diced chicken in bite sized pieces.
- Cherry Tomatoes: You can use grape tomatoes too.
- Parmesan: I love using large shaved parmesan.
- Caesar Dressing: Use homemade Caesar dressing for the best flavor. You can also use store bought if you need to.
- Croutons: You can make your own, try it, it is easy and absolutely yummy!
Making Caesar Pasta Salad with Chicken
This comes together in a snap. You can have a wonderful light delicious meal on the table in no time.
- Pasta: Cook the pasta according to package directions. Drain and rinse in cold water. Set aside.
- Combine: In a large bowl, add Romaine lettuce, pasta, chicken, cherry tomatoes, shredded parmesan, Caesar dressing and croutons. Toss until all ingredients are coated well in the dressing.
- Serve: Best if served immediately.
Tips For The Best Chicken Caesar Pasta Salad
Such a simple recipe that makes a wonderful dish.
- Chicken: For an easy way to make this use rotisserie chicken. You can also pan cook your chicken, but make sure you season it really well. Use Italian seasoning, and salt and pepper. Air fried chicken is an absolutely divine way to cook your chicken. It’s super juicy inside and a bit crispy on the outside.
- Cheese: I love the big shavings of parmesan, use a potato peeler to get nice shavings. It will give loads of flavor.
- Keep it Chilled: Keep everything chilled so that the lettuce does not wilt. If you are making it ahead of time, wait till you are about to serve it to add in the lettuce.
- Lettuce: Romaine is a great stout flavorful lettuce. Do not use super leafy lettuce. It will wilt quickly and not be able to hold up to the chicken and noodles.
Variations Of Caesar Pasta Salad
The basic thing you want to keep consistent is the dressing and lettuce. Everything else you can customize the way you want to.
- Noodles: I love the rotini noodles in this Caesar salad but you can use others. Shell pasta, bowtie, cavatappi, and fusilli.
- Chicken: You can leave out the chicken all together or swap it out for salmon, steak or shrimp.
- Cheese: Parmesan is the star but you can sub out for Asiago, Pecorino, or Parmigiano-Reggiano.
- Add Ins: You can add in a few extras like bacon crumbles, use half lettuce and half spinach, and you can add a splash of lemon.
Storing Your Caesar Salad
This salad is best served immediately after combining it all together to avoid the lettuce from wilting. This will keep in the fridge for up to 5 days, however, the lettuce will wilt. It will still taste amazing but it will not look nice. It will look the best for the first 24 hours.
More Pasta Salads To Love
Chicken Caesar Pasta Salad
Ingredients
- 3 cups Romaine Lettuce Chopped
- 1 package Rotini Pasta 12 oz
- 2 cups chicken cooked and chopped
- 1 pint cherry tomatoes
- 1 cup Shredded Parmesan
- 1 cup homemade Caesar dressing
- 1 cup croutons
Instructions
- Cook pasta according to package directions. Drain and rinse in cold water. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, add Romaine lettuce, pasta, chicken, cherry tomatoes, shredded parmesan, caesar dressing and croutons. Toss until all ingredients are coated well in the dressing. Cover and chill until ready to serve.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
Serves: 8
All nutritional information is based on third party calculations and is only an estimate. Each recipe and nutritional value will vary depending on the brands you use, measuring methods and portion sizes per household.
This is the perfect side for my next BBQ. Me and my wife have a dinner date tomorrow and this one will be an addition to our table. Thank you for sharing the recipes!
My day was made better by reading all the wonderful uplifting positive comments above. I too am a huge Kroger customer (Frys where I live). I have made many recipes from your site and loved them all – including this one. Thanks so much.
So I’m not much of a chef and I don’t know how I should cook the chicken. How did you cook it, just in a pan with some oil? Thanks! I’m looking forward to trying this, especially since I am salivating over the food photos right now!
Yes you can do that… or you can even buy in the packaged meat section Tyson Grilled Chicken strips! It makes it easy to just throw them in. 🙂
My little victory was making a new recipe and recieving lots of ” that was good mom! Thanks!”
Hi Alyssa! I’m not sure if it’s just my/my laptop/or what, but the only ingredients listed for the Chicken Caesar Pasta Salad were:
1 (10 oz) Bag Kroger® Leafy Romaine
1 (10 oz) Bag Kroger® Leafy Romaine
Help! Many thanks 🙂
Ok so I saw that! That is so weird that all of the ingredients went missing but i fixed it! 🙂
My little victory is getting up out of bed with a smile on my face.
I made a hot breakfast this morning instead of oatmeal and fruit. And I cooked supper tonight when we could have easily eaten out instead.
My little victory is that I have been using the crockpot recipes to serve my husband some great easy meals.
My little victory is finding healthier meals on your site & going back to things I used to make healthy when my kids were young, adding lots of salads & vegetables to dinner. Adding fruits to breakfast & lunch. I’ve had a hard time making good healthy meals the last 6 months & esp the past 2 months due to flare up of chronic illness, bronchitis, pneumonia then this terrible flu going around. Eating healthy would help but had no appetite or energy. My husband helped but too much frozen & prepared food! Now to keep it up & make it a big victory.
My little victory will be making dinner in my brand new crockpot for the first time today. I’m making your Slow Cooker Lemon Pepper Chicken. 🙂
This looks amazing. And relatively healthy.
My little victory for today is I made some healthy freezer meals and snacks for the week! Love the salad receipes will make few this week.
My little victory is yesterday, I moved a ton of empty cardboard boxes out of my basement, and found something I was looking for behind all that trash! Now its going to mulch my garden. The basement is a process and there is still much to do, but I’m taking it in stages, and I made progress. And I made the Olive Garden CopyCat Zuppa Toscana – thanks for the recipe!
Is your recipe written correctly? The only ingredients listed are 2 bags of lettuce.
My little victory was finally getting to school perfectly on time today, and everyday this week! It gets super difficult and stressful waking up at 6 and commuting for an 8am class..
My victory today was getting up at 5am to go to gym class. oh, and having a plan for supper tonight – beef and spinach over rice with fresh tomatoes.
These look like great new healthy recipes to jumpstart healthy eating in 2015!
My little victory for today was a big victory. I decided to go back to nursing school and enrolled in classes that start in May!
My victory today was a full fridge of healthy food!
My victory for the day was finding this website last week. I have already tried two recipes and my family loved them. My big victory is my family. This is our year.