January 14, 2021

Classic Chicken Salad

Here at Just A Little Grand, I take requests, and my good friend Kim Halls has asked a couple times for the Positively-Perfect Roasted Chicken recipe (that I finally got posted a few weeks ago), but also for a couple recipes for things to do with those perfectly-roasted chicken leftovers.

(Jump to the recipe file here.)

My top-favorite go-to recipes for using up every last scrap of the Positively-Perfect Roasted Chicken are: (1.) Chicken tacos (recipe coming next week), (2.) chicken pot pie (I recently posted a recipe for Turkey Pot Pie, so I’ll post a chicken pot pie some other time, and (3.) Classic Chicken Salad.

I came across this Classic Chicken Salad recipe looking for the best chicken salad to top my home-made croissants, and the original recipe, found on The Daring Gourmet, is called BEST Chicken Salad, and she’s not lying. It’s the best I’ve ever had or made. Please also check out her blog; it’s top notch.

I have tweaked her recipe ever so slightly and am posting it with the quantities of the ingredients that I always use, to make four ½-cup servings of Classic Chicken Salad.

So I’ve kept my friend waiting long enough!

Let’s get to it!

Classic Chicken Salad

You’ll Need:

For the Chicken Salad Base

2 cups shredded chicken, fully cooked
1 cup red grapes*
4 spring onion stalks, sliced
2 celery stalks, sliced and diced

For the Dressing

1 cup mayonnaise
½ cup sour cream**
1 Tbs prepared yellow mustard
1 Tbs lemon juice (about ½ a lemon)
½ tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 heaping tsp onion powder
1 heaping tsp garlic powder
¼ cup parsley, roughly chopped
1/8 cup fresh dill, roughly minced***

(*If you don’t have grapes on hand, apples work great too! Yet another side note: when I use diced apples, I like to dice them pretty small, like ¼” dice, and then I like to also add 2 to 3 tablespoons of roughly chopped walnuts.)

(**If you’re like me and you just always assume that you’ve got sour cream in the refrigerator but find yourself in the last step of whipping together a quick batch of Classic Chicken Salad, and find you’ve only got a nigh-empty container of sour cream that other family members neglected to mention [it’s happened,] you can substitute with unflavored Greek yogurt. You’d just need a smidge more lemon juice if substituting with yogurt. I find this substitution route works really well with the apples + walnuts substitution.)

(***The original recipe calls for dried dill, which definitely works just as well. My City Market happens to have fresh dill at the moment, and I love fresh dill in and on anything I can get it.)

Start by shredding your chicken to the size pieces you’d like. I just do this by hand.

(Also note: If you haven’t made the Positively Perfect Roasted Chicken and still want to make this Classic Chicken Salad, you can absolutely make it with grilled chicken breasts cut into ¼” diced pieces.)

Rinse and pat dry all your produce bits.

Quarter your grapes.

Slice your 2 celery stalks into ¼” inch slices, then slice those slices into thirds or fourths.

Then slice your 4 green onions.

Toss it all together.

In a separate bowl, prepare your dressing.

Measure out your 1 cup mayonnaise, ½ cup sour cream, 1 Tbs mustard, and 1 Tbs lemon juice, 1 tsp sugar, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp black pepper, and 1 heaping tsp of onion powder and 1 heaping tsp of garlic powder.

Mix it all together.

Pluck all the leaves off your parsley and roughly mince; it doesn’t have to be super fine.

Pluck all the leaves from your dill and roughly mince.

Add both to the dressing and stir to combine.

Then marry the two bowls together and stir to coat.

Cover with plastic wrap and chill for about half an hour to let all those flavors meld.

You can transfer any leftovers to any glass container with a lid and it’ll keep in the fridge for about 3 days.

You can serve this on just about anything. If you’ve made my Croissants recipe, of course this is a match made in heaven. For tonight’s dinner (and today’s post,) I whipped up Erin McDowell’s (<– click here for hers) Salted Butter Brioche (<– click here for mine,) which I am also posting today. (You all get a twofer this week!)

If you’re like nearly all the people I’ve heard from after posting my Tiramisu recipe and are watching carbs and sugar this month, you can (omit the 1 teaspoon of sugar, it’s not that big of a deal to leave out) and also serve an ice-cream-scoop sized scoop on a bed of lettuce, and make chicken salad salad. Instantly great! Or you can also serve it on cucumber slices, one of my favorite ways to eat this. It’s pairings are nearly endless.