The Accidental Chef: Balance is crucial in chicken salads

By: KENDRA BAILEY MORRIS/THE ACCIDENTAL CHEF | Richmond Times Dispatch
Published: February 15, 2009

I am a chicken-salad junkie. I often find myself ordering the chicken-salad plate in restaurants (you know, the one with chicken salad piled high into a tomato cup?) or give me a chicken-salad sandwich that has crispy-fried bacon on it and I'll weep with joy.

Yet while most chicken salads make my tummy very happy, some variations have left me with a lot less cluck.

For starters, really great chicken salad has got to have just the right amount of mayonnaise, not too little (dry) or too much (ooey gooey). This is probably my biggest complaint. Don't get me wrong. I adore mayonnaise, yet there are two schools of thought when it comes to adding mayonnaise to chicken salad.

The first is the more-is-better philosophy. These folks just keep adding and adding until their chicken salad resembles a sort of soupy concoction where if you dig around long enough, you might discover that there is some chicken in there somewhere.

At the other end of the spectrum lie the mayophobes. These people have some sort of unexplained natural aversion to mayonnaise in general. Perhaps as children they were forced to eat mayonnaise outside of its recommended guidelines, such as in a cherry Jell-O salad that had mayo in the recipe. (Yes, this recipe really exists.) Or maybe these people simply grew up in the South, where mayonnaise was forced to take center stage over all things edible.

Whatever the case, when the mayophobe makes chicken salad, sometimes the mayonnaise gets pushed to the wayside in favor of more mustard, sour cream or yogurt, none of which does wonders for the salad's intended flavor, authenticity or potentially dry texture.

While I certainly respect one's right to avoid anything mayo-esque, the fact is, chicken salad was created to be made with mayonnaise, and more than just a teaspoon.

But let's not forget the importance of the chicken itself. Many recipes call for boiling chicken breasts, which while easy and lower in fat, tends to force the salad maker to overcompensate in other arenas, since boiling the meat unintentionally extracts more of its flavor. This is easily remedied by seasoning and grilling the chicken ahead of time or, even better, purchasing a fully-cooked rotisserie chicken and using this in your salad.

I'm not going to sugarcoat the fact that using a fully cooked rotisserie chicken, while less work up front, can be a messy process. Picking through various chicken parts takes time and can make for greasy hands, but the results are well worth the effort.

Rotisserie chicken is already well-seasoned (and often heavily salted, so go easy on adding additional salt) so the basis for a flavorful chicken salad is there. All you need to do is add the basics - onions, celery, mayo, herbs of choice as well as any other ingredients such as toasted walnuts or almonds and sliced grapes. Also, (mayophobes take note) because the rotisserie chicken is already seasoned with plenty of herbs (and many chickens are also brined in a salt, sugar combo), adding less mayo can still result in a first-class tasting salad.

So the next time you get a hankering for a buttery croissant stuffed with homemade chicken salad, grab a rotisserie chicken from your local grocer and whip up a batch of your own stuff, but don't forget, it's all about balance.
Kendra Bailey Morris is a Richmond-based food writer, culinary instructor and author of "White Trash Gatherings: From-Scratch Cooking for Down-Home Entertaining" (Ten Speed Press). Send ideas, tips or culinary questions to info@theaccidentalchef.net or visit www.theaccidentalchef.net.