Chicken Little, or a little Chicken Salad?

Today, I was snow bound, so I decided to do a little experimenting. I was planning to make a Buffalo Chicken Egg Rolls, which I did, but I need to tweak it a bit. I made several roasted chicken breasts and thought, I would make some Chicken Salad, because Marc was on call tonight and wasn't sure if he would get home.

I had one whole chicken breast and one half left over, so I decided that would make a nice amount of salad. There are all types of chicken salad recipes, this is just your basic chicken salad. My favorite chicken salad includes almonds and grapes, but that's a post for another day.

Here is the recipe I used today:

1 whole plus one half chicken breast cooked and diced (this made about 4 cups of cubed chicken)
2 stalks of celery, washed and cut into a small dice
1/2 small onion, peeled and diced
About 1/2 - 3/4 cup Hellmann's Mayonnaise
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
(I used about 1/8 tsp of black pepper, and about 5 turns of the salt mill)

Cut the chicken into cubes. Mix the celery, onion, chicken cubes, mayonnaise together in a bowl. Add salt and pepper to taste.

(You will need cooked chicken, you can use a rotisserie chicken from the store, chicken that you used to make chicken soup, you can poach the chicken breasts, or do as I did today, I sprinkled them with a little Greek seasoning spices (you can use McCormick's Season All Seasoned Salt) and just put them on a baking sheet at 350 degrees for about 20-25 minutes. Let them cool. Cut into cubes. I am assuming that somehow, somewhere, you have some cooked chicken before you decide to make the chicken salad. Turkey Salad is made exactly the same way. Of course, if you have more, or, for that matter less chicken, you will need to adjust your measurements accordingly. This is a basically, "done by taste" recipe. If you like more onion, add more, like less onion, add less, etc.)

Here is what you will need for the chicken salad (please note, the chicken shown below is just to represent the cooked chicken)

Remove the chicken from the bones, remove any skin, and place on a cutting board.

Cut the chicken into strips


and then into cubes, set aside



Wash the celery


Remove the thick ends


and the tips at the top of the stalks


Lay the celery on the board


Cut the stalks of celery into about 4 thin strips


and them cut the strips into a small dice


You can make the dice as fine as you want


Peel the onion


Cut it in half
Place the onion flat side down on a cutting board


Make very thin slices

Rotate the onion 90 degrees and make
another series of thin slices


Separate the onion and give it a final dice to the
desired size you like, I like the pieces very fine



Place the chicken in a bowl


Add the celery


Onions


Freshly grated black pepper



Mayonnaise


Salt


Mix well


If you are one of those parsley people, feel free to
sprinkle a little parsley to decorate it, or
any other methods of decoration that you like.

If you like less mayonnaise, then by all means, use less...

Serve as a sandwich, on crackers, inside of a tomoto, however, you like it!

Enjoy