BBQ Chicken Pasta Salad – Easy Cold Lunch For Work

This BBQ chicken pasta salad is full of flavor and easy to throw together. It can be eaten hot or cold, making it the perfect lunch for work.

Having a husband who drives for a living has its advantages like he’s almost always available to talk to on the phone. 🙂 But it has its disadvantages too. One of those disadvantages is he doesn’t have access to something to warm up his meals. So I have to come up with a cold lunch for him most days.

In the winter I can often do soup in a thermos, but once it gets too warm (the trucks don’t have AC) he needs a cold lunch. And while he will happily eat salads and cold rice and bean wraps, those get tiring fast, especially when you are a meat lover, so I try to mix in some meals with meat.

Regular pasta salad isn’t a big favorite of his either, but I found out that if you make it with BBQ sauce, add some chicken, beans, and corn, and top it with frizzled onions it makes it so much better!

What You’ll Need

• Pasta – I like to use either bowtie or shell pasta for this recipe, but any will do.
• Chicken – If you want to make it simple just use some canned chicken. Often I use leftover chicken from a meal and cut it into bite-sized pieces.
• BBQ sauce – Sweet Baby Rays is what I use, but any kind will work. If you have a kind you like use that one.
• Ranch – I just use the generic store brand from walmart.
• Black beans – You can use any canned beans from the store. I use a quart of my home-canned beans
• Corn – I use sweet corn that we freeze in the summer. I have used frozen corn from the store though and It is fine. Personally, I wouldn’t use canned corn, but if you like it, then go ahead.
• Frizzled onions – These add a crunch and a little extra flavor.

How To Make BBQ Chicken Pasta Salad

• Step 1 – Fill a pot with water and bring it to a boil on the stove
• Step 2 – Once boiling add pasta, stir, and boil for 8-10 minutes
• Step 3 – While the pasta is cooking add all the other ingredients to a bowl

• Step 4 – Drain Pasta
• Step 5 – Add pasta to the bowl with the rest of the ingredients and stir
• Step 6 – Portion out into bowls, top with frizzled onions, and enjoy!

Variations Of BBQ Chicken Pasta Salad

1. Add some cheese, either cubed in the salad, or as a topping.
2. Add some vegetables. If eating this cold you can add some grape tomatoes or avocado.
3. Skip the ranch. The ranch mutes the BBQ flavor some, if you like a strong BBQ flavor you could skip the ranch and just add a little extra BBQ sauce.
4. Make it a hot casserole. Grease a 9*13 dump the pasta salad in the greased pan. Bake at 350 F until bubbly and hot all the way through. I would top it with cheese before baking and add the frizzled onions right at the end.
5. If you want to make it extra simple to throw together, use 2 cans of chicken, 3 cans of black beans, and 1 can of corn.