Chicken Salad: Maybe a Recipe
Two things. One, I just searched my blog for a recipe for chicken salad, because I don't remember ever making it before. I didn't grow up with it, as my Dad won't eat mayonnaise in any form. We did occasionally have tuna salad when he wasn't home, so I'm not sure why chicken salad wasn't on the menu, it just wasn't. So, I don't recall making it, but that doesn't mean that I haven't made it. A good friend made it for the group dinner recently, and that sparked my mind to explore this option when I had a half a smoked chicken to use up.
The second thing? There are no photos of this meal. Sorry, I wasn't thinking about it until after I'd eaten, as I was very hungry. Besides which, I didn't want to delay the feed until I'd taken pretty pictures, and the lighting in this house is... not conducive to food photography. A project for another day.
This isn't really a recipe. Like so many other things in my kitchen, it was born out of standing in the open refrigerator door, pulling things out until I had a sufficiency. I needed to use up the chicken, and I had the other things on hand easily. Next time, I may well have entirely different things. For these times, you want to have the ability to improvise and cook based on technique, not strictly from a list of ingredients. It takes a little practice, but learning how to cook by this sort of method will help anyone who wants to use up the odds and ends on hand rather than needing to shop. Also, any household invariably winds up with random jars of stuff lurking in all corners of the refrigerator, that you must beat back periodically or have no room for anything else in there.
Chicken salad, then, isn't set in stone. However, at it's core, I don't think you can go wrong with:
Chicken, cooked and diced small
Crisp vegetable, diced small
Pickled or brined or both, diced if needed
Mayonnaise
a touch of acid
a touch of sweet
For the chicken, I had smoked a roaster for about 7 hours, so it was deeply flavorful (two roasters, actually, and this is meal number... several, off those two birds. Best twelve buck investment you can make). However, this could be done with any roasted chicken or turkey, you might just have to add more flavor with the other elements. I diced up the meat from a breast, thigh, and leg, and it made enough to serve 4 (or two adults plus a teenaged boy) with the other ingredients.
The chicken and a pickle or relish alone won't have much texture to them. Hence, the crisp veg. I imagine you could use celery here, a classic, but I rarely have that in the fridge. Water chestnuts would work, although they would be bland. I used daikon, and I think any nice radish could be lovely, bringing the bite of heat to the dish. Cucumbers would work, as well. Carrots might be too crunchy unless you grated them. I also added a mild pepper (not a bell pepper, which have a strong flavor I don't care for) to this dish. Raw onion would be great if you like it, I would have added if we had a sweet onion on hand.
For this batch, I had some little chili cornichons that needed to be used up (I think there were 6-7 gherkin sized pickles) and although I didn't add the chilis, the pickles were quite spicy on their own, which was great. But any nice dill pickles, or even relish in a pinch (not sweet relish unless you want this to be on the sweeter side) will work. I also added the last of the jar of capers that was in the fridge, about two tablespoons. Olives would be really nice if everyone you're feeding likes them. I was tempted to chop up some pickled onions into this, and likely will next time.
I used the last of a jar of mayonnaise, so I didn't measure. But roughly a half cup, or just enough to coat the ingredients. I don't, personally, like to have a lot of extra dressing. Which, by the way, you could use any of your favorite salad dressings here in lieu of the mayo.
The acid and the sweet... I used about a tablespoonful of sweet pickle juice for this. Pickle juice, a bit of apple cider vinegar, what-have-you will work here. Just something to add more depth to the flavor.
Toss all of that together, and serve over lettuce as we did this evening, or on a bun if you want, or just eat it out of a bowl. Lovely on a hot summer's night. I'm going to have to continue to explore the options, because I can see there are many, many ways to make up Chicken Salad!
And for some reason, my telling the First Reader (he who reads all my fiction first and I can see from his face if it's any good) that I'd used up three! jars and tossed them from the fridge made him nearly snort chicken salad through his nose. I don't know why that was so funny, but he did tell me it came out very tasty.