The Divine Chicken Salad

Most chicken salad is a mayo-mix kind of thing, like potato or egg salad. My chicken salad is a salad, with chicken.

It has too many ingredients. If you count carbs religiously and at induction level, let alone gross vs. ecc (minus fiber), it's a little bit carby. But damn it's good.

It actually requires three things be made. I know this sounds like a major pain in the butt. But the dressing I usually keep made all the time. The chicken I can semi-stir-fry easily while I'm chopping veggies. So really it's mostly just the time to cut up the salad stuff.

Dressing: First, so it has some time for ingredients to sit together (the longer the better):

BLUE CHEESE DRESSING

The original, which is probably better, by the fabulous chef Karen Barnaby, is HERE. My version has less mayo.

• 4 oz. blue or gorganzola cheese, crumbled. This is usually how much is in the containers you buy at the store, fortunately.


• 1 cup sour cream. You can buy 8oz sour cream containers too, conveniently.


• 1 Tbsp mayonnaise. I've left this out entirely before without much loss in my opinion.


• 2 cloves minced garlic or 1 teaspoon jar'd pre-minced garlic. (I use more if it's fresh.)


• 1 Tbsp red wine vinegar. I've used apple cider vinegar too and it was ok.


• A little sea salt, and a bunch of fresh-cracked black pepper.

Mix it up. Stick it in the fridge. If you decide you want it thinner, just add a little water, and then beat it with a whisk to beat the water in, works fine.

This dressing is simply fabulous on everything. A couple tablespoons I often have on round steak, burger patties, pork cutlets, any kind of veggie, any kind of side dish... it's really good. Once you've made it, especially if you buy stuff in the size of the ingredients noted above, it's super quick to make -- we're talking about 3 minutes -- no big deal at all.

MEATY STUFF

You can do these however you like of course. This is how I do them. I make sure my soy sauce is gluten-free, by the way. Tamari, Bragg, and La Choy are.

• Boneless, skinless chicken breasts (or type of your choice). I use about four of them but again, quantity of your choice. Use kitchen scissors (or very clean scissors :-)) and cut them into chunks, about 1-2 bites per chunk.


• A little garlic, a little ginger, some peanut oil, and a little soy sauce. Sautee or stir-fry your chicken chunks until done, and then remove them from the oil and let them drain. You can change the oil/seasonings here to your taste.


• When you're done, dump out any remaining oil and fry 4-6 slices of bacon in the pan till crispy. Let cool, then crumble.

SALAD-ISH STUFF

This is more a concept than a specific recipe. The concept goes like this: take everything you have that you can imagine in a salad, and put it there. So, everything here is 'optional'. You can trade out types, or entire ingredients, for other things, or leave stuff out.

• Romaine Lettuce


• Red-Leaf Lettuce


• Spinach (fresh leaves)


• Bell peppers of every color


• Anaheim chilis (if you can stand mild chilis)


• Black Olives


• Unsalted sunflower seeds


• Jack cheese, cut into small fingernail-sized chunks


• Avocado, also cut into small chunks


• Radish or Cucumber or whatever else you like


• Broken up pecans or walnuts


• Tear up the leaves. Slice up the peppers (fine). Cut the olives in half. Dice-chunk your cheese and avocado. Slice up any other veggie. Add nuts and seeds. Mix it all up. In a perfect world, let it sit for awhile after you do that.

When all this stuff is in place, toss it together... portions of your liking. Mix the salad stuff, with chicken chunks. When you're done, mix in blue cheese dressing. You don't want to drown in it, but you don't want too little. I recommend thinning it quite a bit so you have the taste everywhere but it's not overwhelming.

You can't not like this, if you use everything you already like the taste of. :-) And here you get protein (chicken), fat (avocado, cheese, a little oil, seeds and nuts), and a few carbs (but not many and most are actually fiber, aside from the dressing), and LOTS of veggies in your day!

PJ