Make Your Own Chick-fil-A Copycat Salad from Your Garden

As someone who has spent a ton of money at Chick-fil-A to feed my four teenage children, I recently decided I would try to make my own version of their kale crunch salad, which costs $4.15 for a little side, but with kale and cabbage leaves from my kitchen garden.

The result? A fresher, bigger, much crunchier kale salad in way less time and for way less money.

The kale crunch salad from Chick-fil-A is already pretty flavorful. But this copycat version is packed with way more flavor and crunch, and it comes together in just 10 minutes (that's with harvest time!). Using fresh salad greens, if you have them, means you'll enjoy fresher flavor and more nutrients than buying greens from the store or a fast food chain.

Let's look at how to make your very own plant-based, super-clean kale crunch salad.

What's in a Kale Salad at Chick-fil-A?

Chik-fil-A is true to their word, so there is a lot of kale in their kale salad. More specifically, they've got curly kale (it looks like blue curled Scotch kale to me) mixed with green cabbage, all chopped up roughly.

Then, they've got slivers of salted roasted almonds, probably from 4 to 5 almonds in total.

The salad is dressed with an apple cider and dijon mustard vinaigrette. Their dressing is pretty clear, so I'd guess they don't use very much actual mustard.

Overall, this salad is pretty simple to make. There are two things you can harvest from your garden (kale and cabbage), and the rest of the ingredients are pantry staples — nothing special or complicated required. Let's look at how to make our own!

Chick-fil-A Copycat Kale Salad Ingredients

Salad

• 3-4 large curly kale or Siberian kale leaves
• 3-4 large green cabbage leaves (also works with red or purple cabbage)
• 1/4 cup almond slivers (optional: dry roast them lightly on your stove first)

Kale Salad Dressing

• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tablespoon dijon mustard
• 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• 2 tablespoons honey (or agave or maple syrup)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Optional Add-Ons

• Apple slices
• Chickpeas
• Feta, goat, or parmesan cheese
• Dried cranberries or apricots
• Grilled chicken

Note: Chick-fil-A probably uses leaves from mature heads of cabbage. I like to harvest those outer cabbage leaves while my plants are still growing. The flavor will be the exact same, but the leaves might not be as crunchy as more mature cabbage leaves.

Steps to Make Kale Crunch Salad

One: Wash Salad Greens

Give your kale and cabbage leaves a quick rinse and spin in a salad spinner or wash and dry with paper towels. It's time to assemble this easy, crunchy, delicious kale salad.

Two: Chop Salad Greens

Chick-fil-A uses every part of the kale leaves in the salad, so that's what we'll do. The kale ribs are what put the crunch in a kale crunch salad.

Line up your kale leaves and slice them about every inch. Then, make one or two vertical cuts to ensure all your pieces are bite-sized. Toss the kale into a large bowl. If you'd like, you can massage the kale leaves with your hands for a couple of minutes. This is supposed to bring out more sweetness in the kale. (Note: I never massage my kale, and my salads always taste great to me!)

For the cabbage leaves, I just roll them up to make cutting them into little ribbons super easy. Toss your cabbage leaves into the bowl with the kale.

Three: Prepare the Dressing

Mix the olive oil, dijon mustard, apple cider vinegar, honey, and a pinch of salt in a jar or small bowl. You can always add more honey or sweetener if you like. To me, you can never have too much sweetness with your salad.

Four: Toss

Drizzle the dressing over the leaves. Sprinkle the sliced almonds on top. I'm a lot more generous with the almonds than Chik-fil-A is, thanks to my huge box of almonds from Costo. Your salad is now ready to eat!

Note: Store extra dressing in a jar in the fridge for up to a week.

Side-by-Side Comparison: Chick-fil-A Kale Salad vs Homemade

Size

A kale crunch side from Chick-fil-A weighs a quarter pound once the dressing and almond slices are added. It's pretty small because it's intended to accompany a chicken sandwich.

My homemade version weighed half a pound. You can easily double or triple the recipe to make enough salad for your whole family. It can be a full meal for lunch or dinner or a side salad for numerous people.

Time

Chick-fil-A is usually pretty fast for fast food, even with their crazy lines. Even so, I whip up my kale copycat in just about 10 minutes, versus the 30 minutes it takes me to get in my car, drive to Chick-fil-A, wait in line, order, and drive back.

Cost

Kale and cabbage are two of the simplest plants to grow in a home vegetable garden. Kale is a super hardy plant that you can harvest from weekly. I can typically keep the same kale plants in my garden from about February through November, so that's 10 months of harvests. Even if you buy kale starts for a couple bucks each, we're talking about, at most, $0.10 per harvest if you're harvesting regularly.

For the cabbage, you'll need about 4 leaves from one cabbage plant that cost about $3 at the nursery. That plant can stay in your garden for months, and you'll be able to harvest older, outer leaves that entire time. I estimate each harvest costs you about $0.30. So we're at $0.40 for the greens so far.

Let's estimate about $1.00 for the small portions of olive oil, dijon mustard, apple cider vinegar, honey, and salt used to make the dressing.

The almonds are the most expensive ingredient by far. I buy a large container of almonds from Costco for about $15, and I probably use about $0.30 of almonds.

All together, I make my own salad for about $1.70. A Chick-fil-A kale salad side costs $4.15, plus tax.

Taste

My garden-fresh version is — if I do say so myself — really delicious and crunchy. It strikes the perfect balance between sweet and savory. To me, it tastes like something I'd expect to find at a nice restaurant, though I can't say I've ever had a salad quite like this one at a nice restaurant.

The Chick-fil-A version is a lot soggier and much less crunchy by the time you get it home (it arrives already dressed), and the dressing is a little too mild for my taste. Making your own means you can add more mustardy flavor, acid, or sweetness to suite your preferences.

Waste

We have to consider the gas you spend to drive to Chick-fil-A and back home. There's also a paper napkin, a plastic fork, a bowl coated in something to resist oil and grease, an un-recyclable plastic lid, plus the plastic wrapper for the almond slices. Except for the napkin, these things are going to stick around for decades after you've enjoyed your salad.

Compare that to preparing your own salad at home. You've used a little bit of water from your kitchen sink to wash the leaves. That should be your only waste.

Time to Make Your Own Salad

The best part about this copycat salad? You can head outside and make it again tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that! That's real fast food to me!

If you'd like to learn more about growing your own kale, cabbage, and other fresh salad greens right at home, check out our free Salad Garden Guide ebook. We can all be growing our own salads at home, even if you have very little space, sunlight, or gardening experience.

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