The McDonald's Menu Hack For A Budget-Friendly Chicken Salad

Counterintuitive as it may be, it is possible to eat healthy at McDonald's. Yes, the fast food giant removed many of its wraps, salads, and parfaits from its menu at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, much to the chagrin of some diners. Though these items haven't been added back to the nationwide menu, franchisees were given the option to serve them again. As a result some local markets now serve salads.

This means that, if you're in one of those lucky local markets, you'll want to know about this McDonald's salad hack. This involves ordering a side salad, as opposed to than any of the full-sized salads. You'll also order a McChicken sandwich without the bun and extra lettuce. This will leave you with a chicken patty, a lot of lettuce, and mayonnaise. You could also just order the whole sandwich and take everything off the bun yourself.

The final step?  Chop up the chicken patty and add it and the lettuce to the side salad for a budget-friendly chicken salad. Of course, if you like some bread with your salad, there's always the option of dining on those now-empty McChicken buns while you're at it.

The decision to remove salads from the nationwide McDonald's menu wasn't necessarily popular. Though these salads weren't all a slam dunk low-calorie choice, they were a convenient way to get a couple of your daily servings of vegetables. Even after pre-pandemic daily life has resumed, these items, which were mostly scrapped to streamline the chain's drive-thrus, haven't. But given that salads have been offered at McDonald's since at least 1987, many are understandably disappointed to see them vanish.

Still, as the side salad McChicken hack shows, there are ways to get a large helping of veggies at McD's. Even if you can't find the side salad at your location, if it's possible to order a McChicken with no bun and extra lettuce, you could do the same thing with any sandwich or burger that prominently features vegetables. And as we've reported regarding the Big Mac Salad, ordering enough extra veggies with your bunless burger can result in you being handed what amounts to a salad.

Even if McDonald's salad fans may be waiting some time for their favorite item to return to the menu, these hacks point to a new selection of salad options, provided you don't mind asking for an inordinate amount of extra toppings in place of a bun. While the variety of salads previously available at McDonald's was finite, the imaginative McD's hacker will be able to use just about any of the chain's specialty burgers or sandwiches as their starting point.

For instance, you could make a Quarter Pounder with Cheese Deluxe salad, featuring lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, hamburger, and cheese. The only thing you'll have to figure out is what dressing to add, provided you aren't a fan of mustard and ketchup on your salads. Or you could concoct a salad from the Deluxe McCrispy chicken sandwich, which would include tomato, lettuce, and fried chicken. If you get the Spicy Deluxe McCrispy, you'll have a dressing with a nice bit of heat, too.

It bears mentioning that, even without salads, other relatively healthy options have remained on the McDonald's menu, like oatmeal and apple slices. While these aren't a full meal, they represent healthier choices.