Panera Bread Green Goddess Cobb Salad with chicken is a salad that so many people love. This salad is loaded with delicious fresh toppings and is perfect for low carb and keto diets (just eliminate the pickled onions). Best of all, it doesn’t taste like you are on a diet.
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The Green Goddess Cobb Salad at Panera
Panera’s Green Goddess Cobb salad is a customer favorite for its fresh ingredients and unique flavor. Unlike other establishments, Panera Bread salads don’t have artificial colors, flavors, preservatives, or sweeteners, which patrons appreciate!
This specific dish has savory grilled chicken, tangy pickled onions, plump tomatoes, and buttery avocados, so there are many ingredients to indulge in. Since the chicken and hard-boiled eggs provide protein, this Panera Cobb salad is hearty enough to enjoy as an entree. Then again, you can also serve it as a side dish, which makes it versatile.
Why you should make this recipe
When you want to bring your favorite Panera salad to life, this recipe is the best! All the ingredients used are identical to the salad on Panera Bread’s menu, making it feel like you took a trip to Panera.
The Green Goddess dressing tastes incredibly refreshing, and the pickled red onions complete the dish. Not to mention, despite it having many ingredients, it’s so easy to make at home! This copycat recipe helps you to make your version in just 20 minutes, so what are you waiting for?
Salad ingredients
Here is a list of what you need to make the salad and dressing. The exact measurements are in the printable recipe card below.
For the pickled onions, you’ll need:
- Red onion
- White vinegar
- White granulated sugar
- Salt
For the salad components:
- Salad blend
- Grilled chicken breast
- Crisply cooked bacon
- Avocado
- Chopped tomatoes or grape tomatoes
- Hard-boiled egg
- Feta cheese crumbles
For the salad blend, it can be a mixture of arugula, romaine lettuce, red leaf lettuce, baby kale, radicchio, or your favorite fresh greens.
When you buy your lettuce blend, carefully inspect its quality. The lettuce should look firm and crisp with no brown spots or edges. Furthermore, wilting leaves or yellow undertones are signs that the lettuce is on its way to spoiling, so avoid purchasing lettuce with those attributes. When it comes to a salad like this, fresh ingredients are a must!
For the green goddess dressing Panera copycat:
- Mayonnaise
- Tarragon leaves
- Fresh chives
- Flat-leaf parsley
- Watercress (cleaned and tough stems removed)
- Lemon juice
- Champagne vinegar
- Salt
- Pepper
Now that you’ve seen what is in Panera’s Green Goddess Dressing, you probably noticed all of the herbs. Fresh tarragon, chives, and parsley are essential in the salad dressing because combining multiple herbs gives a unique, vibrant flavor. Make sure to pick the best quality herbs, too!
Ingredient substitutions for the Green Goddess Cobb Salad (Panera)
You can swap the grilled chicken breast for a different type of protein if you wish! For example, steak, shrimp, or even salmon taste wonderful on this Panera Green Goddess Salad.
To make this salad low carb, all you need to do is remove the pickled onions, which entirely omits the five carbs in the recipe!
Meanwhile, if you can’t find a pre-made salad blend, you can make your blend by purchasing the different greens, chopping them, and tossing them together.
Special equipment
I recommend using a mandolin to slice the onions for the pickled onions. This helps to ensure that they are uniform slices and thin enough to absorb the pickling mixture without needing to sit overnight.
Also, a blender or food processor is required to fully break down the herbs in the Panera Bread Green Goddess Dressing. It also guarantees that there aren’t any lumps in the dressing, making it super silky.
How to make the recipe
Here are the steps for making the salad and dressing:
Pickled Onions
- Use a mandolin to thinly slice the onions, then transfer them to a glass far.
- Mix the white vinegar, sugar, salt, and warm water until everything is dissolved.
- Allow the onions to rest in the mixture for 30 minutes minimum.
Panera Green Goddess Dressing Recipe
- Use a blender or food processor to combine all the dressing ingredients.
- Blend the dressing for at least 30 seconds or until it is nice and creamy.
Assembling The Salad
- Start by putting the lettuce in a large salad bowl or a plate.
- Place thinly sliced chicken breast on top of the greens.
- Add the other components, such as bacon, avocado, tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, and feta cheese. Put the pickled onions on last.
- Drizzle the dressing over the entire salad before serving.
Recipe variations
- Lime Green Goddess Salad Dressing Panera uses lemon, but you can try swapping the lemon juice for lime juice! It still gives the dressing a pleasantly citrusy hint. It’s just slightly different!
- White Beans. To give it more substance, add chickpeas or canned white beans, which perfectly pair with the other ingredients and give the dish more protein.
- Cabbage. For added texture and color, include shredded red cabbage in the salad. This is an easy variation since you can purchase it pre-shredded!
How to serve the dish
Some prefer carefully assembling the salad, highlighting each ingredient by piling the toppings in sections rather than sprinkling the components. This is entirely up to you, though!
Moreover, you can evenly distribute the dressing by mixing all components to make a tossed salad. With this method, the lettuce wilts much faster, so you need to enjoy it immediately!
Another option is to make this recipe as meal prep if you want to eat it on the go. Build the salad in a container and keep the dressing separate until you eat it!
What goes well with the Panera Cobb Salad
Panera Bread has the “You Pick Two” deal, where you can pair this salad with another item. You can easily recreate this at home by serving this dish alongside a panini or cold sandwich!
Also, it’s delicious with warm soup if you’re enjoying this on a chilly day, whether you want to recreate the Panera Baked Potato Soup or the Panera Broccoli Cheddar Soup to accompany it.
Check out this recipe for parmesan chicken wings for a tasty appetizer to enjoy before the salad.
How to store the green goddess salad
To store any remaining components, keep them in the refrigerator.
For the salad dressing, transfer it to an airtight container. It will last about one week!
As far as the pickled onions go, please keep them in a sealed jar and enjoy them for up to two weeks.
Can’t get enough of Panera Bread? Here are more great Panera Bread copycat recipes for you to try!
- Mediterranean Grain Bowl
- Panera Bread Panini
- Copycat Tomato Basil Soup
- Fall Squash Soup
- Broccoli Cheddar Soup Panera Bread Recipe
- Panera Bread Macaroni and Cheese
- Panera Bread Muffins
- Panera Bread Spreads – Honey Walnut Cream Cheese
More dinner salad recipes
Check out more of my copycat Panera recipes and the best homemade salads.
Panera Bread Green Goddess Cobb Salad
Ingredients
Pickled Onions
- 1 cup sliced red onion
- 1/2 cup white vinegar
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 1 cup warm water
Salad Assembly
- 6` ounces salad blend use arugula, romaine, kale, and raicchio blend
- 6 ounces grilled chicken breast
- 2 tablespoons crisply cooked bacon
- 3 tablespoons chopped avocado
- 1/2 cup chopped tomatoes
- 1 hard boiled egg cut in half
- 2 tablespoons feta cheese
- 2 tablespoons pickled onions
Green Goddess Salad Dressing
- 1 cup mayonnaise
- 2 tablespoons tarragon leaves
- 3 tablespoons minced chives
- 1 cup flat leaf parsley
- 1 cup packed watercress cleaned and tough stems removed
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon champagne vinegar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
Instructions
Pickled Onions
- Slice onions as thin as possible, I like to use the 1/8 inch setting on my mandolin. Place the onions in a glass far. In a small bowl combine white vinegar, sugar, salt, and warm water. Stir until the sugar and salt are dissolved. These should rest about 30 minutes for using.
Green Goddess Salad Dressing
- Place all of the dressing ingredients in the bowl of a blender or food processor and blend for about 30-45 seconds, or until the salad dressing is mostly smooth and creamy.
Salad Assembly
- Place the salad in the bottom of a large salad bowl. Thinly slice the chicken breast, and place onto the lettuce. Add bacon, chopped avocado, chopped tomatoes, feta cheese, hard-boiled egg halves, and pickled onions. Drizzle over as much salad dressing as desired. Remaining salad dressing can be stored in an air-tight container for 1 week.
Chris David
Really delicious recipe
Sharon
I have ordered this salad twice from Panera and it did not have bacon or feta. Maybe if those two were left out it would more lower calories
Stephanie Manley
It leaving ingredients out would lower calories!
Candace Trass Crute
Always in mine. Maybe it’s chef’s choice.
Maddie
So the full size Green Goddess salad at Panera is 600 calories. Is this just double the portion size or what?
Stephanie
I don’t know how many ounces of chicken you get with the salad in the store, the calories are for the recipe and the serving size as listed.
Kim
I see that the green goddess dressing calls for tarragon leaves, flat leaf parsley and water cress. I’m assuming all of these are fresh? I couldn’t find these at Walmart. I live in a rural area. Do you think they would carry them at Publix? If so, would they be on the lettuce aisle? Thanks in advance!
Stephanie
Please use fresh herbs. You should find them near the lettuce. Most stores carry the flat-leaf parsley, the watercress and tarragon can be harder to find, Publix should have them.
Karen
Am I reading this correctly? 3000 mg of sodium? And so many calories ! Yikes. I knew it tasted too good to be true
Special K
https://www.panerabread.com/en-us/articles/green-goddess-dressing-recipe.html
Rebecca Curtis-Brown
Is that calorie count per serving?
How many servings in the recipe?
Stephanie
The recipe makes 2 servings, the calories are 1175 per serving.
mimi
I read all the nutrition information. I have had a heart attack and am diabetic. I never use sugar – only stevia. 1500 mg of sodium a day. I take prescription potassium, heart meds, blood pressure pills, metformin. I am 73 years old.
Joan
Curious for nutrition on dressing only for green goddess.
Ahmed
Looks so healthy and yummy!
MarkD
We made this twice in the last week. Love this.
Mr Fish
Good effort, good result, good job!
One suggestion, When your computer nerds format recipes for print, It should be done with the idea of printing on one page only. In other words, the print version doesn’t need to have Course, cuisine, keywords or Nutrition facts information. If I was going to create a handwritten version of your recipe I certainly would not include any of that nonsense, now would I?
Stephanie
Thank you, I will be sure to work with the developer on this. You bring up a great point. We are working on this, most recipes print on one page, but there is variability in the length of each recipe. I appreciate your feedback.
Thanks,
Stephanie
S Smith
Mr Fish, You may find it all nonsense, but not everyone does. I actually include the nutritional values when I write down a recipe and am sure others do if they have family members with health conditions. If you have family with different conditions and different needs that you cook for, then you would likely not find it ‘nonsense”. For example one member of my family has had a heart attack so has salt and cholesterol restrictions, one has carb issues because they are trying to lose weight and another, has severe kidney disease and the whole lot is important to try and prevent the degeneration of her kidneys any further. Not everyone sees the world the way you do as some of us actually have health issues where this ‘nonsense’ is actually important. As I collect recipes to try for various family members, having this info is vital. It would be easier if everyone could eat the same things, but life isn’t like that. For Stephanie: So Stephanie, when you speak with your team to sort this, please don’t remove the nutritional facts from the recipe print out. It is important to many of us and with an aging population and a young population interested in staying healthy, this information is only ever going to remain important, even if some don’t find it so right now. Thank you for your recipes!
Stephanie
I don’t plan on removing nutritional information. It was a herculean effort to get calculate nutrition for 1900 recipes!
Rebecca Brandis
I don’t consider 25 grams net carbs as low carb.
anne
Anything under 100g of carbs in considered low carb.
Houstonfit
Made this for my lunch, it was so good!
J
Sorry didn’t see the part about it being low carb and keto ?
Stephanie
My recipe calculator calculates all of the sugar in the onions as an ingredient. If you leave that off, the recipe has very few carbs.
Linda Hawkins
awesome recipes love this