Did you make chicken for dinner this week and have leftovers? My quick leftover chicken salad is my favorite way to reinvent my leftovers into something new. This recipe requires very few ingredients and keeps well in the refrigerator all week long. In fact, the longer it sits the better the flavor.
Leftover Chicken Salad
You can use any leftover chicken you have on hand, even if it was originally made in a sauce, or seasoned. If you’re out of leftover chicken you can use a rotisserie chicken too!
This is perfect for you if you’re a weekly meal planner. Having lunch is now basically effortless, you can add an extra chicken breast to your dinner prep and make chicken salad sandwiches for your lunch!
During my September Easy Weeknight Dinner series, we used rotisserie chicken for Biscuit Chicken Pot Pie and I froze the extra breast meat that was not used for that recipe so I decided to use that for this chicken salad.
Freezer tip: freeze the meat off the bone, in large chunks and let it defrost in the fridge.
Your Choice of Mayonnaise
I grew up in a Miracle Whip household, it wasn’t until college that I discovered mayonnaise and all of it’s glory, I never went back. For this chicken salad, you can use whatever you love the most. There are so many different types of mayonnaise available today that you should pick your favorite. For this recipe I used an organic classic mayo.
If you want to blend together a fresh avocado mayo, here is a recipe to try.
Quick Leftover Chicken Salad
Ingredients
- 2 cups Shredded Chicken
- ½ cup Mayonnaise (see notes above)
- ¼ cup Thinly Sliced Celery
- ¼ cup Small Diced Onion (about 1/2 of a small onion)
- ¼ tsp Salt
- ¼ tsp Pepper
Instructions
- The easiest way to shred chicken is by using a fork to pull the meat against the grain. As you pull it away it will fall into shredded pieces. Thinly slice your celery, I kept the boomerang shape and just thinly sliced about 1 stalk of celery for a ¼ cup. Chop your small onion into a small dice, I think the smaller the better so that the flavors infuse better and you're not taking a bite into a huge piece of onion. See my instructions on how to safely and quickly achieve a small dice of an onion.
- Combine all of your ingredients into a bowl and stir until evenly distributed.
- Taste and season with additional salt and pepper if necessary.
3 thoughts on “Quick Leftover Chicken Salad”