Who even *likes* mayo overload chicken salad?

I love food.  This seems to me like sort of a recent obsession, but largely an obsession indeed.  There’s an important clarification that’s necessary, though: I love good food.

Most people probably think I’m just picky, but I disagree.  Particular, ok.  But picky in the sense that I just don’t want to like things... that’s false.  My taste buds have really expanded their horizons since moving to Vandy Camp (remember that title??) almost four (!!) years ago, and I think I’ve narrowed it down to some understanding of what my tastebuds do and don’t like, and why.  I think I like “pure” foods – the pure, natural flavors of a food, not too much done to it.  Not a lot of sauce and spice necessary.  So... bland stuff.  :-)

So last fall, when I was traveling in Central PA for work, I was surprised to find myself coveting a “Waldorf Chicken Salad” sandwich at the Hershey Pantry in Hershey, PA (you MUST go there sometime).  I generally tend not to like sandwich-style salads (tuna salad, chicken salad, egg salad, etc.) because I have an immediate internal repulsion to Miracle Whip, even when I don’t know that it is in what I am eating, and it seems that MW is frequently over-utilized in these things.  I can handle mayo in measured amounts, but don’t like the flavor much – but I at least won’t gag like with MW.

But, I decided to take a chance and try the Waldorf Chicken Salad.  Man, am I glad I did.  If you don’t know, a Waldorf Salad combines apples, grapes, walnuts, and some sort of binding sauce into a little salad... add chicken and you’ve got a Waldorf Chicken Salad.  It was awesome.  And I kept thinking about how awesome it was.

I have heard for a while how great it is to buy a roaster chicken already cooked from the grocery store and break it down for use in other things like soups and chicken salads and things.  I’d really like to get to the point where I can buy an uncooked whole chicken, cook it, and turn it into PA Dutch chicken potpie... so I thought I should start with a roasted one, and thought that maybe I could use it to create my own Waldorf chicken salad.

I searched for recipes online and wasn’t 100% pleased with what I found – most of the recipes used a lot of mayo, or even sour cream, and that didn’t sound good to me.  So I improvised, and this is what I came up with.  I’ll tell you up front that it was awesome, and trust me when I say that you want to make this.

No really - go get a pen and paper to write this down.  I'll wait.

You will need cooked chicken, celery, red grapes, Greek yogurt, lemon juice, a tart apple, walnuts, and salt and pepper.  You’re going to have to eyeball the amounts, because it really depends on how much you’re making.  I used as much chicken as I thought I could eat in a sandwich, 2 small stalks of celery, a handful of grapes, half a small container of Greek yogurt, a few squirts of lemon juice, ¼ of an apple, and a handful of walnuts.

So I started by breaking down the chicken.  That was an eye-opening experience, kind of like anatomy class.  In fact, I think if my high school teachers had taught me anatomy and chemistry in terms of cooking, I’d have a much better handle on those concepts (stay tuned for the chemistry lesson, it’s coming).

Once you make this salad it will only keep in the fridge for one day, and since I am only cooking for one I measured out single portions of chicken (I found that I usually overestimated, actually) and froze what I didn’t use immediately.  So start with your portion of chicken, and put it in the container that you will store it in (I reuse old Stonyfield Farms yogurt containers, the big ones).

                                                                                                                                    

Then get out your trusty food processor (thanks Nana!) and chop up some walnuts to tiny bits.  Actually I chopped up my whole bag of walnuts because when do you ever need whole walnuts??

Did you know that walnuts have a lot of oil in them?  Your crumbs will stick to everything.

Halve or quarter your grapes.

And dice your celery:

Try not to drop any... it’s hard to find on a green kitchen rug:

Where’d it go??

Chop up your apples, and put all of these ingredients into the container:

Then, get out your Greek yogurt and lemon juice.  I chose Greek yogurt that has honey mixed in, because I thought that would sweeten it up a little.  Here’s the chemistry lesson: apparently adding lemon juice or something else acidic to the flesh of an apple will keep the apple from going brown!  Unfortunately, that wasn't much of a chemistry lesson because I have no idea how that actually works.  So I measured out the amount of yogurt I wanted, squirted in a bit of lemon juice, and mixed it together.

And then dumped it in to mix it all up!

Once you’ve mixed it all in, add a bit of salt and pepper and you are good to go!  Bonus points if you serve it on some locally-made soft wheat bread.