My mom is addicted to Costco chicken. Every time she goes to Costco, she would bring home one of their rotisserie chicken, sometimes two. Being Asian, no one wants to eat the breast meat so it’s always sitting there on the plate at the end of the meal waiting to be packed into some poor soul’s lunch box for next day. It’s always a lottery on who gets the breast in their lunch box. After so many years losing the lottery and getting the chicken breast which ends up very dry after microwaving my lunch box, I’ve come up with this simple solution to make a chicken salad from the breast meat and turn this hated piece of chicken into something everyone clamors for. The lottery still holds, but now, instead of dreading winning the breast, we now hope we win the lottery.
If you’ve been following in my posts, you know that I always take short cuts because I don’t have time to spend my day in the kitchen. So all my recipes, unless otherwise specified, usually takes 30 minutes or less. This simple chicken salad recipe is no different. In fact, there is NO COOKING involved. Caveat is that you must have leftover Costco chicken breasts!
Ingredients
- 2 large halves of cooked chicken breast
- 1 cup of celery chopped
- ½ cup of red onions chopped
- ¼ cup of green onions finely chopped
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp coarse ground black pepper
- 1 tsp salt
- ½ cup of mayonnaise
- ½ cup of toasted walnuts (optional)
- ½ cup of dried cranberries (optional)
Directions
Remove skin and bones from the breast meat. Next, put the breast meat into a ziplock bag and gently pound it with a meat tenderizer to flatten the breast. Using your fingers, tear the chicken breast into strips and place in a large mixing bowl. Pro Tip: Do NOT cut the chicken breast into strips as the texture is completely different between cut strips vs hand-pulled strips.
Chop all the vegetables and add to the mixing bowl. Add the seasoning and mayonnaise.
Stir the ingredients gently until thoroughly mixed. Refrigerate for 30 minutes to allow the flavors to mix and the salad to cool down. This dish taste better when chilled instead of room temperature.
Prior to serving, mix in walnuts and dried cranberries if desired.
Notes:
This makes a wonderful chicken salad sandwich. My family loves it when I put it between a warm croissant topped with lettuce and tomatoes. A low-carb option would be to make a lettuce wrap.
- 2 large halves of cooked chicken breast
- 1 cup of celery chopped
- ½ cup of red onions chopped
- ¼ cup of green onions finely chopped
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp coarse ground black pepper
- 1 tsp salt
- ½ cup of mayonnaise
- ½ cup of toasted walnuts (optional)
- ½ cup of dried cranberries (optional)
- Gently pound chicken breast with a meat tenderizer
- Shred the chicken by hand
- Stir in all the ingredients until well mixed
- Refrigerate for 30 minutes to chill and allow flavors to impart
- Remove and serve
You can also serve it on a bed of endives for something fancy