Panera Fuji Apple Salad: Easy at-Home Recipe

Panera Fuji Apple Salad with Chicken

Panera Fuji Apple Salad is a mix of greens, red onion, grape tomatoes, pecans, gorgonzola cheese, apple chips and thinly sliced chicken breast. The salad is topped with a sweet and zesty white balsamic apple vinaigrette.

If you’ve had the Fuji Apple Salad from Panera, then you know just how good it is.

In fact, it’s my go-to Panera salad.

Are you like that? Where you order the same food over-and-over at a restaurant?

Really, the only thing I don’t like is the price. At almost $12 per salad at Panera, making the Fuji Apple Salad at home is a real money-saver!

Of course, sometimes I’m willing to pay for the convenience of ordering out, but this salad is super easy to recreate at home. Plus, I can make enough for just myself, the entire family, or meal prep it for a week’s worth of lunches.

Panera Fuji Apple Salad Ingredients

Making Panera Fuji Apple Salad with Chicken is perhaps the easiest of all the copycat restaurant recipes I’ve made. Here’s all you need.

• Romain Lettuce
• Red Onion
• Grape Tomatoes
• Apple Chips
• Gorgonzola Cheese
• Toasted Pecans
• Sliced Chicken Breast
• Panera Fuji Apple Salad Dressing

All the ingredients are readily available, so it’s really a matter of a little prep, then tossing everything together.

Lettuce & Greens: The bed of greens in the Panera Fuji Apple Salad is a mix of arugula, romaine lettuce, kale and red leaf blend.

To keep the cost under control, get a spring mix. Additionally, pick up some romaine lettuce if the spring mix doesn’t have any in it.

Gorgonzola Cheese: Crumbled gorgonzola cheese is a must-use ingredient for recreating this Panera salad at home.

Not only does it add a creamy texture bite after bite, but it’s strong flavor pairs perfectly with all the other ingredients.

You can substitute the gorgonzola with a stronger blue cheese if desired.

Fresh Fruits & Veggies: Every salad needs some fruit and veggies tossed in for flavor, and the Fuji Apple Salad is no exception.

Thinly sliced red onion adds a little spice. Halved grape tomatoes and crunchy apple chips provide some sweetness.

Toasted Pecans: Toasted pecan halves add even more crunch to this copycat salad.

To make it restaurant-worthy like Panera, be sure and toast the pecans.

It only takes a few minutes to do so, and the toasting process brings out even more nutty flavor.

If you love pecans, you might also like this copycat recipe for Panera Strawberry Poppyseed Salad.

Chicken: A tasty salad is a delightful combination of ingredients. Chicken provides some protein which makes it over-the-top satisfying.

To keep things simple, I get a rotisserie chicken and slice some of the breast meat into small, thin pieces.

This way, every forkful of salad has a little bit of everything on it!

The Apple Chips Panera Uses

Panera uses the Seneca brand of apple chips in the fuji apple salad.

Specifically, they use original flavor Seneca apple chips which are made from Red Delicious apples that are hand-picked in the Pacific Northwest at peak freshness.

In my opinion, these perfectly crunchy apple chips are the star of the show.

Seneca’s original flavor apple chips are mildly sweet with notes of acidity and bring a nice crispy texture to the fuji apple salad.

If you can’t find them at your local grocery, you can buy multi-packs of Seneca apple chips online.

(Take a look at this tweet where Panera Bread confirms that Seneca is the brand of chips they use.)

Panera Fuji Apple Salad Dressing

The salad dressing Panera serves on the side of the Fuji Apple Salad is a white balsamic apple vinaigrette.

The dressing has a sweet and tangy flavor and is creamy in consistency.

What’s even better is that you can pick up a bottle of this exact Panera salad dressing at the grocery store.

Fuji Apple must be one of their most popular flavors of dressing because I can find it at any store I go to.

The Panera at-Home Fuji Apple Vinaigrette dressing is dairy-free, gluten-free and vegetarian.

Making the Fuji Apple Salad

There’s nothing I love more than a meal I can prepare ahead of time.

I don’t know about you, but when I have dinner planned early in the day or lunches ready to go for the week, especially a healthy salad, I just feel more relaxed and ready to conquer the day.

Basically, you can prep it and forget it. Then it’s just a matter of assembling the salad when it’s time to eat.

Quick Steps to Make Fuji Apple Salad

1. Toast pecan halves in the oven and set aside.

I like to toast more than what I need. According to Food Network, toasted pecans stored in an airtight container last up to 2 weeks in the refrigerator and longer in the freezer.

2. Slice the salad veggies and meat.

Cut the grape tomatoes in half, and thinly slice the red onion and chicken breast.

3. Portion all the ingredients if meal prepping.

I like to measure out the greens into glass Pyrex meal prep dishes with lids. Then I measure out the rest of the ingredients and put them in separate containers. I put the pecans and fuji apple chips in a small baggie, and pack up the cheese apart from the onion and tomatoes.

4. Assemble the fuji apple salad.

For family meals I assemble each salad in individual bowls instead of combining everything together in one big bowl. This way everyone is sure to get the same amount of every yummy ingredient, especially the apple chips!

5. Top the salad with white balsamic apple vinaigrette.

We’re keeping things simple here, so pick up a bottle of Panera Fuji Apple Dressing from the grocery store. Put the dressing on when ready to eat.

Nutrition

Salad at Panera

According to Panera Bread, a whole Fuji Apple Salad has 560 calories. Without pecans it is 460 calories.

Panera’s in-house fuji apple vinaigrette dressing (1 1/2 tablespoons) is an additional 80 calories.

In total, a whole fuji salad with all the toppings and dressing equals 540 calories.

Furthermore, a full-size portion with pecans contains 34 grams of fat, 85 milligrams of cholesterol, 37 grams of carbohydrates, 22 grams of sugar and 30 grams of protein.

Salad at Home

For comparison, my Panera-inspired fuji salad recipe has 340 calories for a whole salad, pecans included.

Panera’s at-home Fuji Apple dressing (1 1/2 tablespoons) adds another 165 calories, making the total calorie count for one serving of this recipe equal to 505 calories.

If you want to shave off some calories, here’s where to look.

The ingredients with the most calories from highest to lowest are: chicken, Gorgonzola cheese, apple chips, pecans and dressing.

Questions You May Have

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