Curry Chicken Salad– tart, creamy,crunchy, delicious

I need to apologize for my disappearance lately. I’d love to blame it on the romanticism of married life, but truly, I have been insanely busy, commuting out to New Westminister for audiobook recording, researching for my thesis, and trying to keep up with the ridiculous number of professional commitments I’ve signed up for. It’s all very exciting but it is also exhausting and terribly it is Not Crocker that has suffered… oh and my husband, because I’ve barely cooked. But! BUT! Today I made chicken salad. As a meal. AS A MEAL. And it was glorious and easy. I’ve always thought of chicken salad as something you make with left over chicken, but cooking chicken fresh, for the purpose of chicken salad is AWESOME. Recommend, 10/10, will cook again. I got the recipe base from one of my favourite blogs, Budget Bytes, and I adjusted it just for my own tastes and personal preferences! I am going to try this recipe with a marinade on my chicken one day and report back!

Curry Chicken Salad

Lightly adjusted from here.

Ingredients

  • 2 chicken breast halves
  • salt & pepper to taste
  • 1/2 tsp ground ginger
  • 3 stalks of celery
  • 4 green onions
  • 1 yellow or red pepper (green is cool too but then you have a really green dish)
  • 1/2 cup sliced almonds
  • 1 tart green apple (I used Granny Smith)
  • 1/2 cup dried cranberries

Dressing

  • 1/4 cup mayonnaise (make your own!)
  • 1/3 cup plain greek yogurt
  • 1 1/4 tsp lime juice (or lemon)
  • 1 1/2 tsp curry powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/4 tsp black pepper

Directions

  1. Season both sides of the chicken breasts with a light sprinkle of salt, pepper, and ground ginger. Cook the chicken breast on a grill, I used our counter-top one, or in a skillet until cooked through. Refrigerate the cooked chicken breast while you prepare the rest of the salad.
  2. Slice the green onions, and chop the apple, pepper, and celery into small pieces. For the apple, I quartered it, cut the quarters into thirds and sliced those thirds into small chunks. Put the green onion, celery, apple, sliced almonds, and dried cranberries in a large bowl, sprinkle with a little lime juice to prevent the apples from browning.
  3. In a small bowl, stir together the mayonnaise, yogurt, lime juice, curry powder, salt, and pepper in a small bowl. Taste the mixture to see if you prefer more curry powder.
  4. Take the cooled chicken out. Cut the chicken into small cubes and place it in the large bowl with the rest of the chopped ingredients. Stir to combine. Pour the dressing over top and stir to coat.
  5. Eat. I am definitely making a sandwich with this sometime. Soooo tasty. Oh yes, and it may or may not be accompanied by a fruity beer.

Fresh mayo in the tall cup, veggies and spices, ready to go!

Okay, okay, so the recipe says to pour the dressing onto the veggies, but I just chopped and plopped the veggies onto my dressing. Works either way!

Scrumptious