Chicken Salad Stuffed Avocados: An Easy Meal Prep Lunch

These tarragon chicken salad stuffed avocados are super tasty and easy to assemble making them the ideal weekday lunch!  

When I'm having these for lunch, I usually just eat them on their own. For a light dinner, I'd pair them with a simple green salad or these Melon and Mozzarella Skewers.

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Chicken salad is always a good choice for an easy dinner or weekday lunch but sometimes it can be a bit heavy if it's drowning in mayonnaise. So for this chicken salad, I've substituted plain Greek yogurt for most of the mayo and then stuffed it in an avocado so you get a serving of veggies along with your chicken salad!

Contents:

• What makes a great weekday lunch?  
• Ingredient Notes
• How to make this recipe
• Meal Prep Tips
• Tips for toasting nuts
• Recommended Tools
• More meal prep lunch recipes
• Chicken Salad Stuffed Avocados

What makes a great weekday lunch?  

In my mind, it's something that can be mostly made ahead of time and is easy to transport (if you take your lunch somewhere), and that either reheats well or doesn't need to be reheated. And of course, it's got to taste great too! These stuffed avocados check all of those boxes. 

If you are taking this to your office for lunch I recommend just taking the whole avocado with you and cutting it in half when you are ready for lunch. That keeps it from turning brown before you are ready to eat!

I also think recipes that can be meal-prepped provide an easy way to have options ready to go when you are short on time. This entire recipe can be ready in just about 20 minutes, making it perfect for any day of the week.

Ingredient Notes

The full list of ingredients and quantities can be found in the recipe card below.

A few notes about the key ingredients for this recipe:

• Avocados: Pick two large avocados that are ripe.
• Chicken breast: I always use boneless, skinless chicken breast when I'm making chicken salad but you can substitute boneless chicken thighs if you prefer dark meat.
• Greek yogurt: I recommend using plain, low-fat or full-fat yogurt.
• Mayonnaise: I generally use olive oil mayo but you can substitute your mayo of choice.
• Dried tarragon: I tested this recipe with fresh tarragon but found the taste too over-powering so switched to using dried. It gives you a nice pop of flavor without overpowering the other flavors.

How to make this recipe

This is a super easy recipe that comes together very quickly!

1. Grill the chicken. You start by spraying or brushing the chicken with olive oil and seasoning it with salt and pepper. Then you'll grill it, flipping it over after about 6 minutes. Once the chicken is cooked through, remove it from the grill and let it cool for about 10 minutes. Once it's cooled a bit, you'll want to shred or chop it into bite-sized pieces.
2. Toast the almonds. Once the chicken is on the grill, get the almonds toasting so you are not waiting for them to finish.
3. Make the chicken salad. Once the chicken has cooled a bit, add it to a mixing bowl, and then add the Greek yogurt, mayo, tarragon, lemon peel, salt and pepper. Mix well until all of the chicken is coated with dressing.
4. Assemble. Slice the avocados in half and stuff them with the chicken salad right before you are ready to eat.

Tips for toasting nuts

In many recipes, I prefer toasted nuts, especially toasted almonds, so I keep a supply of them in an airtight container in my pantry. They will keep for about two weeks once toasted. I've tested a number of different was to toast nuts so these are my tips for the best results:

• Heat a non-stick pan over medium-low heat and add enough nuts to cover the pan in a single layer. I typically use a 10" so I can toast a good amount of nuts at one time.
• For sliced or slivered almonds, toast them until the white part starts to turn light brown.
• For darker nuts, you'll need to keep an eye on them to ensure they are nicely toasted but don't burn.
• I've found that cooking time varies widely depending on the stovetop, type of pan and type of nut. It will take at least 10 minutes but might be quite a bit longer. I recommend doing something else in the kitchen while the nuts are toasting as they can go from toasted to burnt pretty quickly if you don't keep a close eye on them.

More meal prep lunch recipes

If you are looking for other easy lunch options, check out these reader favorites:

• Cold Peanut Noodles with Grilled Chicken. This is another great meal prep recipe and it also uses grilled chicken so you can get two different meals out of one grilling session!
• Grilled Chicken Quinoa Salad. And if you want to get really efficient with meal prep, you can grill a LOT of chicken and make this one too! It's a great everyday lunch that is good for picnics and summer parties as well.

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This post was originally published in June 2017. It was updated in May 2022 and November 2023 with some new information and photos. No changes were made to the original recipe.