Years ago, when my husband (then boyfriend) lived on his own, his mom would bring him food. She would come down and load up his fridge. He brought out this "salad" and a bag of tortilla chips one evening. He didn't know what was in it (forcing me to back create it). One bite and I was hooked. What was in it? Hmmm Bite.. , Bite, OOOh not mayo. sour cream. YUM, and onions, and cillantro? WOW.
A few years later, when my best friend was living with me and my boyfriend (now husband), we were hungry. We had one left over chicken breast, from dinner the night before, and 1 cucumber, and 2 green onions (pretty sad looking. but edible), and cellery, and cottage cheese, and a little bit of sour cream oh and some lettuce and cabbage (pathetic looking, But edible). we just jumped in and started dicing up everything. We used all of the sour cream, not enough to really bring it all together, so we used some cottage cheese. salt and pepper. IT was DELISH.
So here it is. We have played with it over the years and you can too. But the basics are that this is a delicious way to make Chicken Salad.
This is one of those recipes, where if you can make it for 2 you can make it for 12.
This is the for 2 recipe.
1 chicken breast (2 small thin breasts) sliced thin and then diced.
1/2 cucumber peeled, seeded, and diced
2 scallions sliced thin
1 celery stick diced thin.
1 tbs finely diced cillantro (you could omit, or swap with parsley or basil)
1/2 c light sour cream (if you like the extra tang, you could use greek yogurt)salt and pepper, and garlic powder (we use it on everything.)
Basically, dice it all up, then toss it in a bowl. Add sour cream, cottage cheese, stir to combine. DONE. Don't put the salt in NOW. put a tiny sprinkle on when you want to eat it. if you do it now, it will draw the moisture out of the cucumber and onions and make your chicken salad wet... It doesn't taste bad. just wet.
NOW what to do with this.
Serve it like a sandwich. Soft breads for soft fillings. So a potato bread, or onion rolls, would be great.
Serve it with crackers, or chips. Top it with some chopped tomato or avocado, and eat like a dip. This is Hubby's favorite way to eat it.
Serve about 1/2-3/4 of a cup on top of a green salad with light vinaigrette. The salad offers a creamy consistency and protein. Plus if you do it on a salad of mixed greens with spinach, you are getting protein X2 and calcium X2. This would be a great work lunch.
You can change this up A MILLION WAYS>
off the top of my head. instead of cillantro, use a little Curry powder.
use left over chicken. Today I had a great buy on garlic and herb chicken breast, single packs from the lunch meat section. I have done it with rotisserie chicken, grilled chicken, pulled chicken would work too, but you would want it to be pretty dry. (maybe lay it on paper towels while you dice the veg)
I bet a salsa baked chicken would be good, nice spicy flavor. I would scrape off any extra salsa. But.. You see where this is going. Don't like cucumber? Omit it, double up on the celery, or add a little carrot. Bell pepper would be good for color and crunch. Start with this recipe, but then the sky is the limit.
