The Best Chicken Salad

A few weeks ago, Tim made us a chicken salad to have on hand for the week. After putting some pictures of my chicken salad lunches on Snapchat (the best place to catch the majority of my eats nowadays –> username fitnessandfeta), I received many requests to post the recipe for this one. We’ve made a few different iterations of this chicken salad, but this one is our favorite. Enjoy!

Serves 6-8

Ingredients

Whole chicken
Half a red onion, diced
3 celery sticks, diced
1/4 cup plain Greek yogurt
3 tbsp whole grain mustard
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tbsp dill
1/2 tsp cayenne
1 tbsp paprika
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees F.
Brush the outside of the chicken with 1 tbsp of the extra virgin olive oil, and then season with salt and pepper. Place the chicken either in a roasting rack or on a baking try, and then cook for 40-50 minutes or until the internal temperature is 160 degrees.
Once the chicken has cooled, shred up all the meat and place in a large bowl. Mix in the diced red onion, the diced celery, the yogurt, the whole grain mustard, the and remaining 1 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil. Mix well.
Add the dill, cayenne, and paprika. Season with more salt and pepper, and mix a final time.

This recipe takes a little bit of prep time up front, but it’s mainly from the time the chicken takes to cook. It’s worth it though because this dish will last you the week, so you get a lot of bang for your buck in my opinion! For my crock pot fans, you could also put the chicken in a crockpot, cover in a couple of cups of broth, and cook either on low for 6-7 hours or high for 3-4 hours before shredding the chicken. For those who don’t like dark meat, you could also just cook up a couple of chicken breasts and prepare the shredded chicken that way too. Lots of options!

I feel like a lot of people don’t like to buy or order chicken salad because of the mayo, but this recipe uses Greek yogurt as a healthier replacement. Making the chicken salad from scratch and with yogurt allows you to get the right consistency for your own preferences. Don’t worry about being able to taste the yogurt – the whole grain mustard and olive oil provide a great counterbalance, so you won’t even be able to tell the difference.

You can eat the chicken salad in a sandwich (try it on Ezekial bread or the quinoa flax bread from Whole Foods – so good!), in a whole grain wrap, or simply on top of greens with some sliced tomatoes, sliced cucumbers, and pickled red onions. We also like to use the chicken salad as a dip sometimes with celery sticks for a healthy snack option too.

If you give this a try, let me know by posting it on social media at tagging me @achievewithathena with #achieveawesome. Hope you love it!