In A Pinch Chicken Salad

Uninspired for lunch or dinner? Looking for something easy? This is a good, fast recipe that came about because my mother was trying to lighten up and duplicate the chicken salad at La Bagette in Memphis (which is her all time favorite). She mixed it up and asked what I thought and I (being the foodie of the two of us) started listing things I thought we should add. So I mixed up my own batch of the following when I got home last night. It turned out pretty well considering I just kinda threw it together as a 10 o’clock snack/late dinner last night.

Ingredients:

  • 1 12.5 oz. can of chicken breast (obviously leftover home cooked chicken is absolutely acceptable and probably better, but we’re talking about convenience food here)
  • 2 scallions
  • 1 rib of celery
  • paprika
  • salt
  • fresh ground pepper
  • FF Miracle Whip (or whatever mayo type product you keep around the house)
  • slivered almonds

Directions:

  1. Open the chicken, drain well and dump into a medium sized bowl (Tupperware works well if you wont’ be eating all of it at once).
  2. Finely dice the scallions and celery and add to the chicken.
  3. Add Miracle Whip to taste (I used about 1/4 cup because I’m not a big mayo person).
  4. Add a dash of paprika, a pinch of salt, and fresh ground black pepper to taste.
  5. Serve with crackers or on the bread of your choice. Also would be good on salad.
  6. Sprinkle slivered almonds over the top.

Other variations:

  • You could dry finely dicing some water chestnuts, grapes, apples, or any other high water content veggie (or fruit) you like to bump up the veggie and fiber content and help lower the calories further. The aim is go with high water content, crunchy stuff. You could, of course replace the scallions with some other onion or with shallots. I like the pop of green the scallions add. Shallots would be a nice mild flavor and a pretty pop f purple.
  • The slivered almonds could be replaced with pecans or walnuts.
  • For a little bit of heat, you could add just a LITTLE red pepper flakes or cayenne pepper. Too much would overwhelm the other flavors.

If you omit the bread or make it whole grain and leave out the fruit, this is a suitable Wave One food for Sonoma Diet or Phase 1 of South Beach Diet.

Printable version.

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