Copycat Portillo’s Chopped Salad for a Crowd

Thanks for sharing!

This chopped salad is perfect for a party! It is part pasta salad, part green salad and all yum! A simple dressing and all of your favorite ingredients will be great for dinner, a potluck or a BBQ!

This salad is a little bit meaty of the leafy, cheesy, meaty salad we all love and a little bit pasta salad.  All of the flavors come together wonderfully and this salad is sized for a party.  Of course you can cut back and make it for a smaller group easily enough.

I have made it for a few big gatherings at our house.  I usually mix up the dressing the morning of the party.

I also get all of the chopping done a couple of hours in advance.  I leave the dressing off until right before it is time to serve.

Sometimes I’ll even only dress half of the salad at a time just in case we don’t need it all. Since the rest isn’t dressed, it keeps longer and can be my lunches during the week!

I like to make variations on this salad as well.  It is great with a mix of bacon and salami.  It is also great with hard boiled eggs or some smoked chicken, because why not?

It has been a couple of years since I actually had a real Portillo’s chopped salad, but this gives me a little taste of it when the craving strikes.     

To make it more authentic, you should use the ditalini pasta, some bacon and some chicken.  I can’t always find the ditalini pasta at my favorite grocery stores though, and the small shells work as a great substitute.     

Do you know what I need to do next? Work up a copycat for their poppy seed salad. (Ps. I did that… check out my recipe for copycat Portillo’s chicken poppy seed salad.)       

It is loaded with fruit, chicken, cheese and a poppy seed dressing that is sooooo good.  They make great Chicago style dogs and Italian beef as well, but I go straight for the salads every time!    

I actually poked around their website once to see what it would take to get a franchise.  I think it would be really successful here. 

Do you have a regional favorite restaurant that you wish you could bring home to your neck of the woods?  What restaurant do you wish you had closer?

Thanks for sharing!