Southern Style Chicken Salad Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Is chicken salad a southern thing? ›

In the South, chicken salad is synonymous with bridal and baby showers, church potlucks, and family picnics. If there are more than eight people around, you can bet chicken salad will make an appearance. In Iran, the same is true for a dish called Salad Olivieh.

Chicken

Chicken salad / Main ingredient

Cooked chicken breast (or leftover rotisserie chicken), creamy mayo, celery, and salt make up a basic chicken salad, but what it's really missing is an acid, something that can break through the blandness so the chicken salad can stand up to whatever bread or roll you serve it on.

You can thicken the chicken salad by adding more chicken, almonds, celery, cranberries, or grapes. You might also like to stir in some chopped hardboiled eggs.

The legend goes that a man named Liam Gray created the recipe by stirring his poultry leftovers together with mayo, grapes, and tarragon. He owned a meat shop in Wakefield, Rhode Island, through which he introduced his invention to customers and allowed its popularity to blossom.

It wasn't until sometime around 1863 that a gentleman named Liam Gray, at his meat market in Rhode Island, supposedly created the first commercial chicken salad by mixing together left-over chicken with tarragon, grapes, and mayonnaise.

Most chicken salad dressings are a combination of mayonnaise, lemon juice, salt, and pepper. The rest of the flavor for this dish comes from ingredients like celery and fresh herbs.

All white meat, shredded chicken, finely minced celery, mayonnaise, & our secret seasoning.

Chicken Salad Ingredients:

1 cup celery, cut in halve lengthwise then sliced, (from 2-3 sticks celery) 1/2 cup red onion, finely chopped (1/2 medium red onion) 1 cup pecans, toasted and coarsely chopped.

Undercooked chicken

Although mayonnaise can certainly cause food poisoning, it's not the only chicken salad ingredient that can lead to a bad result. Raw or undercooked chicken is also a common culprit of foodborne illnesses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Why am I still hungry after eating chicken salad? ›

Your lunch choice may lack sufficient protein, healthy fats, and fiber to keep you feeling full and satisfied. Consider adding sources of lean protein, healthy fats (like avocado or nuts), and high-fiber vegetables to your meal to increase satiety.

Just sprinkling a little salt on top of your chicken right before cooking it will only season the surface. But seasoning the chicken with salt well ahead of time or brining it in a salt-water solution will draw salt deep into the meat, resulting in a very tasty piece of chicken.

To prevent your homemade chicken salad from becoming watery, ensure the chicken is fully cooled and consider roasting or grilling instead of boiling to reduce moisture content. Lightly salt watery vegetables like cucumbers and let them sit before adding to the salad to draw out excess water.

Why is my chicken salad dry? If your chicken is dry, your chicken salad will have a dry texture. Adding more mayonnaise isn't the solution, but rather, adding an element like lemon juice instantly elevates the texture and taste.

A traditional Southern meal may include pan-fried chicken, field peas (such as black-eyed peas), greens (such as collard greens, mustard greens, turnip greens, or poke sallet), mashed potatoes, cornbread or corn pone, sweet tea, and dessert—typically a pie (sweet potato, chess, shoofly, pecan, and peach are the most ...

Stacy Brown and her husband Kevin Brown founded Chicken Salad Chick in 2008 in Auburn, AL. The business idea came out of her love for making and serving chicken salad, a recipe that was passed down from her grandmother.

It is often full of classic comfort dishes like fried chicken, collard greens, black-eyed peas, baked macaroni and cheese, candied yams, cornbread, sweet iced tea, and some type of cake or pie, like a 7-up pound cake or pecan pie to round off the meal!