Southern Style Chicken Salad Recipe (2024)

FAQs

Is chicken salad a southern thing? ›

Early American chicken salad recipes can be found in 19th-century Southern cookbooks, including Sarah Rutledge's The Carolina Housewife: Or, House and Home (1847) and Abby Fisher's What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking (1881).

There could be several reasons why your chicken salad is bland. Here are some common factors to consider: Lack of Seasoning: One of the most common reasons for bland chicken salad is insufficient seasoning. Make sure to add enough salt, pepper, and other seasonings like herbs and spices to enhance the flavor.

To prevent your homemade chicken salad from becoming watery, ensure the chicken is fully cooled and consider roasting or grilling instead of boiling to reduce moisture content. Lightly salt watery vegetables like cucumbers and let them sit before adding to the salad to draw out excess water.

To offset the creaminess (and potentially wetness) of too much mayo, try adding in more of whatever crunchy element you were using. Celery and red onion are some of the most common ones, but you can also try chopped red peppers, bacon bits, carrots, cabbage, apples, chopped nuts, and more.

The important thing is to use white meat and shred it by hand, rather than chop it. Mayonnaise dressing clings to bite-sized shreds of chicken better than uniform little cubes. The only exception to this rule is if you like your chicken salad in more of a smooth, spreadable consistency, as a topping for crackers.

Chicken

Chicken salad / Main ingredient

Overcooked or dry chicken

To ensure that your chicken salad tastes the way that it should, you should avoid using overcooked or dry chicken in your recipe. Unfortunately, as we cook chicken, the moisture of the bird slowly evaporates.

For instance, you can be hit with severe nausea and vomiting just an hour after eating contaminated chicken salad that has a type of toxin-producing bacteria called Staphylococcus aureus.

Generally, chicken salad will only last three to five days, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). You must store the chicken salad in the fridge to maintain its freshness. As a refresher, the fridge should be set at 40 degrees Fahrenheit or below per the USDA.

Chemical changes occur during cooking. Oven gases in a heated gas or electric oven react chemically with hemoglobin in the meat tissues to give it a pink tinge. Often meat of younger birds shows the most pink because their thinner skins permit oven gases to reach the flesh.

How long should you keep homemade chicken salad? ›

It's tempting to stir up a big batch so that we can enjoy leftovers for a few days. But how long is it safe to keep chicken salad on hand? The short answer is to store chicken salad in a sealed container in the fridge or cooler for no more than four days.

One option is to use a classic thickener like cornstarch. To do this, combine a little bit of cornstarch with water until it forms a paste and then add it into your runny mayo. Then, whisk the cornstarch together with the mayonnaise to combine and thicken. You can also use arrowroot powder in the same way.

Fresh herbs, roasted garlic, chipotle, Sriracha or curry powder are all amazing options, as well. You might also enjoy our garlic aioli recipe, which is very similar to this recipe, but uses egg yolks instead of whole eggs.

The biggest offenders for creating a watery salad are raw or cooked watery vegetables or ingredients that have not been dried after you've washed them. To ensure they're completely dry before adding them to the salad, you will want to pat them with a paper towel or a clean, absorbent dishcloth.

Historically, chicken salad is not as Southern as you might think. The chicken salad that's beloved today originated in Wakefield, Rhode Island. In 1863, Liam Gray, founder of Town Meats, was the first to mix leftover chicken with grapes, mayonnaise and tarragon.

The first place I got any real leads was from the website for Willow Tree poultry farms, who noted that “we can thank the Chinese for being the first to serve variations of “chicken salad.” Of course, these versions were far from what we are familiar with today, but the general idea was pieces of chicken mixed with a ...

In the video, Cleveland native Tanisha Godfrey has a chicken salad in front of her and says, “Y'all better come up here and get one of these.” Someone off camera asks her what it is, and she responds, “It's a chicken salad," then shares where she got it from ("81st Deli … superior") and what's in it.

It is often full of classic comfort dishes like fried chicken, collard greens, black-eyed peas, baked macaroni and cheese, candied yams, cornbread, sweet iced tea, and some type of cake or pie, like a 7-up pound cake or pecan pie to round off the meal!