Chicken salad is one of my summertime staples for quick and cool lunches or dinners.
I always roast or crockpot a whole chicken every week or so, and then use the meat for whatever meals are on the menu for the week. In the summer I almost always crockpot my chicken overnight so I don’t have to heat the house up with the oven. I just throw the chicken in the pot with some veggies and water before I go to bed, and in the morning I have perfectly juicy chicken for a week or so worth of meals.
This summer I had to play around with my original chicken salad recipe since discovering that a family member is not doing well-digesting eggs. I typically use my own homemade mayo, and that has an egg in it. As it turns out, this way that I have been playing around with is just as delicious and the rest of the family hasn’t even questioned if it was a different recipe!
- 3 cups cooked pastured chicken, chopped
- 1 large carrot, fine dice
- 4 med/large pickles, fine dice
- ¾ cup whole sour cream
- 2 TB good olive oil
- 2 TB organic Dijon mustard (watch ingredients!)
- Juice of half a lemon (about 1-2 TB)
- 1 TB raw honey, sucanat, or pure cane sugar
- 1 tsp onion powder
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- ½ tsp sea salt
- Pepper to taste
- Optional pinches of chipotle powder for heat and kick if you wish – even if you don’t like heat just give it a small pinch – the flavor is amazing!
- Combine everything in an airtight container and store in the fridge! No fuss!
Tips:
- This is a good-sized recipe to make up on a Sunday evening for quick meals all week. You could even just pack it up with you to work and bring something different every day to serve it on – salad, tomato or cucumber slices, or your bread of choice.
- If you are dairy free but can have eggs, you can use homemade mayo instead of the sour cream.
- Play around with the seasonings to your taste! Sometimes just hitting it with a different flavor or seasoning will change it up just enough to taste like a whole new dish!
- One of my “no compromise” foods is having quality pastured organic meat – we may be on a very tight budget, but our meat will always come from our local farmer that pastures their chickens, doesn’t inject them with hormones, and gives them feed without soy or other hormone damaging products like GMO corn. I can make a whole chicken stretch a good week or so by doing up whole chickens vs buying chicken breasts. I cut corners here and there on organic produce – especially the “clean 15” but I figure you just can’t “wash off” the hormones and other dangerous properties of animal products like eggs, chicken, beef, and milk. Ask around at your local farmer markets for a good source for your meat throughout the year! Don’t be afraid to ASK questions!
Renee
This looks sooo good! I wish I hadn’t already used my roast chicken this week for soup, next week this is going on the menu. 🙂