My mom used to make very good chicken salad. I’ve been fondly thinking about those sandwiches for awhile.
Sams Club/Walmart offers small cans of chunk chicken breast, in a members mark six pack. I bought one and wanted to make some chicken salad sandwiches.
I have a new jar of Hellman’s Mayo, Dill Relish, black pepper, and lemon juice. I plan to get some seedless grapes later today.
It’s mom’s proportions that I don’t remember.
Assuming a 12oz can of drained and shredded, white chicken meat.
How much mayo, relish and lemon juice?
I’m guessing maybe 3 tablespoons mayo, 1 tablespoon relish and 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice? Add black pepper and stir in a few finely chopped grapes?
Add mayo gradually until you get the consistency you like. I like my chicken salad to be similar to a Waldorf salad, with grapes, walnuts and raisins and apple. I use tarragon for the herb. No pickle relish, however. This is more of a eat-it-from-a-bowl version than a sandwich version.
My chicken salad is savory rather than sweet. Rather than fruits and nuts, I add thinly sliced celery, carrots, shallots and green onion. I add mayo for consistency, and a little bit of mustard for a little bit of tangy.
I know the OP is asking for chicken salad sandwich recipes, but I’m posting my favourite chicken sandwich recipe anyway.
1 grilled chicken breast, warm/hot
2 or 3 rashers bacon, hot
Lettuce
Tomato
Avocado, sliced
Focaccia, split, buttered, and toasted
Aioli (or plain mayonnaise)
Split the focaccia, butter it, and toast it. Spread aioli on both halves. Assemble as follows: Chicken breast, bacon, lettuce, tomato, avocado. Close the sandwich and slice diagonally. It is important to slice it diagonally because if you cut it into rectangles some of the goodness leaks out.
I like it with a Spring greens salad with bleu cheese dressing (with big chunks of bleu cheese, or add some) and croutons.
I follow the Silver Palate recipe, which calls for equal porpotions of sour cream and mayonnaise, and tarragon. I don’t measure, just mix to the consistency I like.
Can of tinned white-meat chicken.
One or two dried apricots, chopped up
Handful of raisins, either dark or golden
Spoonful of mayo
Spoonful of Major Grey’s chutney
Chopped almonds or walnuts if available, but okay without. Slices of cucumber on the sandwich also okay or not if I happen to have one in the fridge.
Even though it’s got raisins in the chicken salad, this goes very nicely with grapes.
1 can chicken white meat ( we get them at Costco)
Big handful of pecans, probably 1/2 cup or more, chopped very course
Handful of golden, (never dark), raisins
1 big stalk of celery, chopped
2 Tbsp (maybe) mayonnaise. I just add it until it’s the right consistency.
1 tsp (maybe more) of Indian (sweet) curry powder
salt & pepper
This is our best guess at a chicken salad we used to get at a deli near my wife’s office many years ago, except they used green grapes. We usually have golden raisins but not grapes.
I grew up with the occasional sandwich of egg salad, or tuna salad, or ham salad (this last may be a Cleveland thing — i”ve never seen it on the east coast — ground cooked ham mixed with mayo, mustard, chopped dill pickle, and maybe some chopped hard-boiled egg).
Leftover chicken was always torn to pieces, placed carefully on a lightly buttered piece of Jewish rye, covered with lettuce leaf and sliced fresh ripe tomato, and topped with another slice of rye, judiciously mayoed and salt and peppered.
This is the first recipe that sounds good to me. The rest all sound hideous (grapes! celery! raisins! nuts! in a chicken sandwich - blechh).
It’s instructive because I don’t consider myself at all a picky eater. However, apparently I do have a few irrational prejudices.
Anyway, for a chicken salad sandwich I’d use chopped/shredded fresh cooked chicken (never canned), just enough mayo to hold it together, salt if necessary, and a liberal dose of tarragon and pepper. I would accept, but not require, chutney spread on one of the slices of bread (toast them, please).
Basically, leftover cooked chicken. Chop that shit up. Add some fruits and veggies. Celery, apples, cranberries, raisins, whatever you have around. Oh, something from the alliums: a bit of onion, scallions, green onion, whatever. Nuts, too. Typically almonds, but walnuts, pecans, shit, even sunflower seeds, it’s all good. Then something sweet: I like apricot jam or fresh peach slices. Bind it together with mayo & curry powder, and you’re good to go.
Here’s a real recipe. I got a bit beyond that. When I worked in a cafe about 20 years ago, we had a “chicken curry salad” which was pretty much a Coronation chicken salad, with celery and some fruit (raisins, apples).
I don’t worry about proportions. I just add stuff that looks good until it tastes right. What goes in is highly dependent on what’s available at the time.
Chicken salad with grapes is a specific variant: veronique. That’s the variant I prefer, though I use dill instead of tarragon. And often swap out the mayo/olive oil with greek yogurt + lemon juice, for the tangy.