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Dinner Tonight: Curried Chicken Salad

Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, February 4, 2008 at 4:15 PM

What a comedy of errors. I had some leftover chicken breasts from a roasted bird, and wanted to make a chicken salad sandwich to change things up and use the meat before it went bad. For some reason, I had curried chicken salad on my mind—a concoction I rather enjoy even if it usually only denotes a sprinkling of curry powder on regular old chicken salad. But this time I wanted to dig a little deeper, and see if this quick dish could be a little more flavorful and well rounded than my impromptu imitations. I found this fantastic looking curried chicken salad recipe from Cooks Illustrated that added honey, raisins, and lemon juice. And talk about easy, if the chicken was already done like mine was, then it it required no cooking. All it needed was a little mixing. How could this fail?

Apparently, it is fairly easy if you put me in charge. I arrived home from the store all ready to get started, but had forgotten that I was out of mayo and raisins. Not wanting to head back out to the market, I jaunted across the street to my not-so-convenient store and cashed out big time for a mini bottle of mayo, but couldn’t find the raisins (I briefly flirted with picking them out of some trail mix). I had to substitute the currants leftover from last month. To compound all of those previous mistakes my nice expensive loaf of bread vanished from my grocery bags, leaving me looking around in disbelief that I could screw this much up. I had to get creative. There is nothing quite wrong with just going at it with a fork, but I decided to toss it upon some romaine leaves, creating the rather awkwardly titled Curried Chicken Salad Salad. Either way, it was utterly delicious, and brave step forward for curried chicken salad.

Curried Chicken Salad

- make 2-3 servings -

Ingredients

2 chicken breasts, roasted
1 rib celery, finely diced
1 scallion, minced
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon lemon juice
3 tablespoons golden raisins
1 teaspoon curry powder
1/2 tablespoon honey
Salt and pepper

Procedure

1. Shred the chicken. The easiest way is to cut the roasted chicken breast into thirds, and then get to business with your fingers shredding the chunks apart. (If you don’t have any roasted meat, roast two chicken breasts with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper in a medium oven until done, about 30 minutes. Let cool before shredding.)

2. Mix everything together in a large bowl. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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