Southern Chefs Share Their Secrets To The Best Chicken Salad

My favorite meal between classes when I was a graduate student at the University of Mississippi was a scoop of chicken salad from a food truck near the English department building. Served with Zesta crackers and scooped onto a tender leaf of romaine like a gleaming pearl, it tasted like heaven. It was easily the highlight of just about any day I ate it.

It turns out that I simply hadn’t experienced the delight of the cold plate until moving to the deep South. Upon moving to Birmingham, Alabama, I learned that this sort of chicken salad was everywhere to be found if I knew how to look for it. From Piggly Wiggly to gas station, deli to sit-down-restaurant, most quick lunch establishments (and the Southerners that lovingly and critically frequent them) take the flavor, texture, and temperature of their chicken salads extremely seriously.

So I asked Southern chefs what their tried-and-true secrets are—I knew that they would have opinions, and their answers didn’t disappoint. If there’s one lesson you heed, let it be to vary up the texture of your chicken, whether shredded or cubed. And while it might be controversial in some circles, always leave out the fruit and nuts.

Chef Tricks For The Best Chicken Salad

Use An Egg Salad Base

Yes, that’s right: Egg salad! The yolk and texture of tender egg whites thicken up a tangy mayo base even further, perfectly coating and complimenting the textures of shredded chicken meat.

• “The basis for a great chicken salad is a solid egg salad base: boiled eggs, diced celery, mayo, creole mustard, green onions, salt, pepper, and creole spice,” says Farrell Harrison, Executive Chef of Maria’s Oyster & Wine Bar, Plates Restaurant & Bar, and Le Moyne Bistro in New Orleans, LA. “Farm fresh eggs will give you a bright yellow hue and a great rounded flavor (don’t forget to season your water before boiling). I like to keep my eggs a little larger, so I push them through a [wire] rack to get a large dice that is easy and quick.” Harrison also recommends mixing Blue Plate with Zatarain’s Creole mustard, for an extra kick.

Rotisserie Chicken

While you won’t find chicken salad on the menu at Rêve, one of Birmingham, Alabama’s newest fine dining establishments, chef/owner Jacob Stull says that staff meals often speak to the soul of comfort food. The key, sometimes, is the simplicity of properly roasted leftover rotisserie chicken:

• “At the last restaurant my team and I worked in, we had a French rotisserie oven.. .Every night, we’d marinate whole chickens in Dijon mustard, rub them down like barbecue with herbes de Provence and salt, [and] then slow-roast them until the skin crisped and the meat turned tender and fragrant,” says Stull, who remembers how the team would use any leftover roast chickens to make chicken salad at the end of service. “We’d pull the meat and toss it with Kewpie Japanese mayo, heaps of fresh chives and tarragon, finely diced shallots, and preserved lemon: bright, herbaceous, and rich.”
• Chef Brian Mooney of Tre Luna Bar & Kitchen brines and roasts his own chicken for chicken salad, every time. “We start with a whole chicken, which is brined for 24 hours to lock in flavor and moisture,” says Mooney. “After it’s roasted, we pull both the white and dark meat, creating the perfect base for our chicken salad.”

Use A Mixer Or Food Processor

The secret to the perfect chicken salad is as much about the ingredients as it is about the method of making it.

• Executive Chef Graham House and Chef de Cuisine Graham House of Luminosa in Asheville, NC, recommend using a whole roast chicken, both dark and white meat, but placing half of it in the food processor before hand shredding the remaining bits for texture. As for the rest of the salad, they advise: “Use equal parts, sour cream, and mayonnaise. Use hot sauce, and every fresh herb that you have in your reserve… Put pickles in it!”
• Chef Alex Green of Mileta in Lexington, KY, takes a similar approach. “After the chicken is cooked and has thoroughly rested and cooled slightly, I will cut the breasts into 3 to 4 pieces, against the grain,” he says. “I’ll use a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment to shred the chicken slightly but so there’s still some chunks. You can use a handheld mixer, or even two forks. I like these longer shreds because it gives a kind of web network for the chicken to hold together when you’re taking a bite but still has a definite meatiness to it.”
• If you don’t have a processor or mixer, not to worry: You can always use your hands (or two forks, like Green).

Add Whatever’s On Hand

• Chef Brandon Sharp of Próximo in Chapel Hill, NC, has one and only trick, and it’s quite possible that he said it best. “My trick: I make it differently every time depending on what is on hand!” It’s a pleasant reminder that whatever mayo, herbs, or chicken you’ve got will suit just fine—as long as it is mixed well.
• Even still, many chefs would warn against adding ingredients just to add them. “Apples and dried fruit do not belong in chicken salad,” says Harrison, who adds a joke only a NOLA-based chef could make, “and save the pecans for the pralines!”