Spring Herbed Chicken Salad

May 20, 2013  •  Meat & Poultry, Salads

chicken salad spring herbsThere is something simply magical about spring. After enduring snow and freezing temperatures for months, the ground suddenly just comes alive. From a pile of dead foliage from last year’s garden, all of a sudden everything starts sprouting green shoots and leaves. It never ceases to amaze me, and it inspires me to make something with those fresh herbs the minute they reveal themselves.spring herbsI also wanted to post this recipe because it’s incredibly frugal. I catered a dinner recently and I did what I preach to my Cooking Matters students: buy a whole chicken and butcher it yourself for better pricing, better control on the butchering, and so you can use the carcass. I cut up five small chickens and used the breasts for the event, froze the leg quarters for an upcoming event, froze the wings to try making a fun chicken wing recipe, and then simmered the five small carcasses in some water with onions, celery, carrots, and bay leaves. That yielded 18 cups of chicken stock that I froze in smaller containers, and I picked the meat from the carcasses and was left with 4 full cups of chicken meat.spring herb chicken salad 2Once you use the carcass to make stock, the meat will be pretty shredded and isn’t that robust in flavor, since most of the flavor goes into the stock. So it’s perfect for making chicken salad. The mayo adds back some much needed fat and creaminess, and the herbs and shallots give it a great punch of flavor. If you figure the carcass was “free” (it would have just gone to trash), and the herbs are “free” (yes, I purchased small plants years ago, but at this point these perennials just keep pumping out loads of fresh herbs every year), then the only real cost in this recipe is a little mayo and a shallot. Now that’s a bargain, right?

Spring Herbed Chicken Salad
 
Prep time
Total time
 
Author:
Recipe type: Salad
Serves: 6
Ingredients
  • 4 cups shredded cooked chicken
  • ¼ cup minced fresh herbs (parsley, chives and tarragon are a nice blend)
  • 1 shallot, minced
  • mayonnaise and/or nonfat Greek yogurt, to taste (I used ⅔ mayo, ⅓ yogurt)
  • juice of 1 lemon
  • salt and pepper, to taste
Instructions
  1. Combine chicken, herbs, and shallot in a medium bowl. Add mayo and Greek yogurt to your liking along with the lemon juice and stir everything until well combined. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

 

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  1. 1800 parties says:

    Informative blog, exactly what I was looking for.

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