Basic Chicken Salad
Ingredients
Cooked chicken breast or thighs seasoned how you like (we like Herbs de Province, garlic and onion powder, salt & pepper, olive or avocado oil and a splash of lemon juice)
Mayonnaise - 100% recommend Sir Kensington’s avocado mayonnaise
Yellow mustard
Red or green apple or grapes (I prefers grapes, husband prefers apples)
Parmesan cheese
Salt & Pepper
Pecans (optional)
Make it
Here’s the thing about chicken salad. It’s amazing. You can make as much as you want and keep it in the fridge for the week. This is Ethan’s favorite food I make. He wants it all the time for lunches so we keep this on pretty regular rotation. Pretty regular rotation means a few times a week. So when I’m really smart I make a lot of chicken early in the week and use this for quick meals. I’ve found that keeping the chicken stored and making the salad fresh every few days is more enjoyable for me verses having a large vat of premade chicken salad. I like the feeling of fresher food that is still quick to make. Mayonnaise and mustard on chicken sitting in the fridge for longer than a day grosses me out. This way all I have to do is chop up the chicken and fruit and add the mayo/mustard combo. The other amazing thing about chicken salad is you can add anything you want to this basic recipe. We’ve added sweet relish, spicy jalapeños, red onion, minced garlic, radishes, shredded carrots. You can go as fancy or as basic as you desire. Changing it up can jazz up your week, too. You can serve this on fresh made sourdough bread which we did this week or you can eat it with almond flour crackers which we did last week. You can serve it on a fresh bed of greens, chunky lettuce wedge, any of your favorite leafy vegetables. And there’s always the option to add extra or different cheese.
Measurements
I’m the world’s worst food blogger because I’m supposed to have exact recipes for you to follow but this just isn’t how I work! I’m doing my best to create recipes but I also just want to get the food my family eats out there for you all and work on crafting my recipe skills as I go along. Chicken salad is awesome and getting started in the kitchen making your own food should be exciting so I’ll do my best here with the mayo/mustard measurements to help get you started.
I always use separate spoons for the mayonnaise and stirring, that way I can begin with a small amount and add more. There’s nothing worse than soaking chicken salad. Ew.
So begin small. I’m typically chopping up 3-5 chicken pieces so that means I’ll start with 3 tablespoons of mayonnaise to 1 tablespoon of mustard. Give that a good stir and see how you like it. I typically add 1-2 more tablespoons mayonnaise. This is really up to your liking.
For the cheese, I love using a block of Parmesan from Costco and a hand grater and just let it go until I’m happy with the cheese amount. You don’t have to add cheese at all but it is delicious.
Since I season my chicken earlier in the week when I cooked it, it really only needs a bit of salt and pepper to taste. I love peppery chicken salad so I usually bring even more to the table with me.
Health benefits & Extras
We prefer the fattiness of the chicken thighs but you can absolutely use breast if you prefer. What you really want to focus on is making sure your chicken is antibiotic free. This is top priority. We buy ours locally from Sonrise Farms whenever possible and we also get chicken from Costco. Not only is this better for the enviroment and the lives of the chickens that we use for our food, it also decreases the levels of toxicity we have in our bodies.
As for condiments, you want to make sure you stay as far away as possible from harmful oils. Never any canolia oil, soy oil, cottonseed or corn oils. Just don’t do it. As with anything, do your own research. They are very toxic and extremely harmful to human health.
