Poultry Pairings

The Many Faces of Chicken Salad

By Donna Smith

Chicken salads are like spaghetti sauces – everybody has their own special way of making it. This salad used to be predictable. When someone said, "Chicken salad, please," they knew it was a mixture of chicken, mayonnaise, celery and maybe an occasional green onion thrown in for variety. Today, saying "chicken salad" could mean hundreds of different things.

Chicken salads now come "oriental," "Italian," "Mexican," with fruit, in oil dressings, with beans, with pasta, smoked, grilled and there is even a hot chicken salad casserole. The list of possibilities is endless. But no matter what type you enjoy, there is not denying that it is delicious.

For the serious chicken salad connoisseur, the only way to go is boiling a fresh chicken. An average size chicken gives you about 3 cups of meat, which is plenty to make a nice amount of chicken salad. For those who want to make preparation a bit easier, buy a pre-cooked roasted chicken from your grocery store or deli. This way, you'll still have to debone and shred the meat, but you skip the whole cooking process. Want to make it even quicker? You can now buy chicken already diced or shredded in the frozen food section of the grocery store, or there is always canned chicken.

Want to see more?

• Hot Chicken Salad Casserole
• Broccoli Chicken Salad
• BBQ Chicken Salad
• Santa Fe Chicken Salad
• California Chicken Salad
• Tropical Chicken Salad
• Talk about it!