This is like a freebie dish. You dont specifically go shopping for it, you likely have most of the ingredients already on hand, and you use the extra chicken meat that you have leftover from say this delicious homemade chicken soup, or a rotisserie chicken you picked up from the store the other night.

A couple of the other reasons you should make this, aside from the obvious deliciousness factor, is that it requires only one bowl and a spoon to make, no cooking, and you can make it hours or days ahead of time so it’s RTG (ready to go) whenever you are! Put it on crackers, a sandwich, a spoon, or even mixed with some salad greens (not that you should feel obligated, since this is after all a “salad” to begin with).

*I look at a recipe as a guidline, I encourage you to stray from the path if you feel so inclined. You have some cilantro, scallion, dill, chervil, tarragon, etc. burning a hole in your pocket? Throw it in there. You’re one of those people that likes grapes in your chicken salad? Go for it.

*The recipe below calls for 1 pound of chicken, but because you may be using leftover chicken from another dish, the probability that you have that exact amount is low. If you have a half pound, halve the recipe. If you’re in the ballpark (3/4 – 1 1/4#), use the recipe as is and simply adjust your salt, it will still be good, I promise.

*If you’ve never followed a recipe using weights rather than volume, this here is a perfect time to dip your toes in the pool. You have your one bowl on your digitale scale the whole time, add one ingredient, press the “tare” button, add the next ingredient, “tare” and so on and so forth. No more trying to scrape every last bit of mayonnaise out of your half cup measure. No more losing sleep at night wondering if your 3T of parsley are packed in the tablespoon the same as mine were (10g parsley is 10g parsley, I dont care who you are). Oh, and g = grams, it’s accurate and its easy.