Friday, May 15, 2009

Don't Chicken Out


Making your own FRESH chicken salad is soooooooooo easy. Often times those store made ones at the deli in your grocery have more mayo in them than needed. I make a face when I go to that same container the next day and it seems to have rendered some extra mysterious liquid that I am remixing...(never quite sure why)

Now that spring is springing all around....time to get out some scissors and put those fresh herbs to work!

Here are some pictorial steps for you followed by the recipe:

At grocery get yourself a rotisserie chicken from the deli dept. Our store has a special on them each Sunday 4.99 instead of 6.99 during the week. Jump on that bargain. Remove all skin, fat, bones, etc and shred in a bowl.





Go out to your herb garden and select your fresh herbs you want to play with. You are seeing fresh parsley, thyme and chives here. OH the smell of fresh herbs!






Get out your SHARP scissors. These are the OXO brand that the blades separate for easy cleaning. LOVE THEM! Run now and get yourself some. I'll wait....crazy sharp! Anyway, grab your chives and chop them right into your bowl.





Take those same scissors and clip off the leaves from your parsley. They say that the stems are not supposed to be chopped with the leaves and their flavor isn't as pleasant or perhaps bitter.





Take your index finger and thumb and run along the thyme stem. Running from root to tip end. You may have to pinch a bit to get it to cooperate. Don't worry, if you get a bit of the tip of the 'branch' it is soft and not as 'woody' as the base.





Throw your parsley and thyme in a short glass.








Clip away with those scissors again. Great thing for your kids to do if they aren't old enough/ready to use the knives yet!






You may say "BAH....knife and cutting board works for me"
I feel this process bruises the herbs LESS. But that's me.







Toss your cut herbs in the bowl, add your pepper, garlic salt and mayo. Stir with a fork. This helps to shred the chicken more if you missed a few chunks.







Fresh Herbed Chicken Salad

1 rotisserie chicken
1/2 cup mayo
1 tsp. freshly ground pepper
1 tsp. garlic salt
1 Tbsp freshly chopped parsley
1 tsp. freshly chopped thyme
2 Tbsp. freshly chopped chives

1. Remove roasted chicken from the bone, removing skin, fat, etc. Place in bowl and shred with a fork.
2. Chop all your fresh herbs and put on chicken in bowl. Add mayo, pepper and salt.
3. Mix throughly with a fork.

Cook's Note: You will notice that this chicken salad is a bit on the dry side. That is okay. This is purposeful so when you prepare your sandwich you will add some extra mayo on your bread. I find if you put TOO much mayo in your chicken salad that it will squish out the sides as you bite it. Besides, don't you want to taste the chicken and not the MAYO?

So fresh and I like knowing WHAT is in my chicken salad....and I can control the amount of mayo and feel good about eating it! I think K-man would eat this for every meal if he had his way. He LOVES chicken salad. He put out a 'hint' a few days ago that he was craving chicken salad...Message Received Honey!

2 comments:

Leslie said...

I love to mqke homemade chicken salad. yummO

Donna-FFW said...

This chicken salad looks delicious. I love all the fresh herbs you put into it.