What’s for Dinner? Waldorf Chicken Salad! Noreen’s Kitchen

Greetings! I got a really good deal on some chicken this week and pan seared off a bunch this afternoon. I thought it might be nice to throw together a nice light salad for supper. Spring is here in my neck of the woods. Today was nearly 80 degrees! Time to plan for lighter fare and more salad suppers. Waldorf chicken salad is on the menu tonight.

This is seriously a throwback to my youth when every single potluck supper and family dinner celebration was not complete without someone contributing a Waldorf salad. Traditionally my memory recalls a bunch of red delicious apples, walnuts, raisins and mayo tossed in a bowl. Not the best, but as a kid I remember enjoying it more than a tossed salad.

Today I have upped the ante and made this my own. Green apples, celery, shredded carrots, chopped water chestnuts, golden raisins, dried cranberries and pecan halves along with a light, tangy dressing and some of that grilled chicken, bring this salad up to date without ruining too much of the nostalgia. Adding the protein makes this perfect for a light dinner on luncheon choice. You can easily make this for a crowd just by tossing everything but the lettuce in a big bowl and allowing everyone to help themselves.

You could also easily change this up to suit your own family’s preferences. Don’t like pecans, add almonds, cashews, walnuts or a combo. Don’t like celery? leave it out! You get the picture!

This is also a great option to put out on your holiday table with Easter and Passover on the way.

I hope you give this a try and I hope you love it!

Happy Eating!

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Everyone I’m Nina welcome to my kitchen and a new episode of what’s for dinner this one’s kind of in the spirit of spring and Easter and the upcoming holiday I mean we have Passover and we’ve Easter coming um so I thought it might be nice to do a fresh salad that

You can you can use as a main course you can use as a side dish you can take it to a potluck um and it’s just perfect and it’s Waldorf salad it’s a classic a throwback if you will so we’re going to make it a little bit different we’re

Going to update it a little bit we’re going to make it really fresh and delicious and this is how I’m going to make it tonight I thought this might be a really nice alternative so what we’re going to do is I have oh I forgot the celery see

I’m going to grab the celery out of the fridge first of all let me do that and Waldorf salad really is whatever you want it to be okay here’s a couple of ribs of celery that we just ran a knife through you can make it as fine or as chunky as you want

This is two carrots I just graded on the box Grater and then huh you buried all the celery I buried all the celery well there you go I’m going to mix everything up anyway but but you want a celery mhm that’s okay this is a can of water chestnuts that are um chopped and I’ve drained it

And we’re just going to plop it right in there I have two Granny Smith apples that I have chopped up I have about a half a cup of um con Habs a half a cup of crains dried cranberries and a cup a half a cup of golden raisins this is easy stuff

Right I’m going to grab a spoon and I’m going to give this a toss and you know what Rick is going to say it’s not quite there yet I think it will be though so just to be on the safe side I’m going to go ahead and get a larger

Bowl which I should have gotten in the first place so let’s see here oh he isn’t that a salad bowl H well it’s see this use it for anything much better way better oh yeah give that a good toss Have some really it looks like spring already nice fresh salad now we’re going to make a dressing now feel free to substitute the mayonnaise for Greek yogurt which I intended to do and when I went to the grocery store I got everything except the Greek yogurt so it is what it is right

Right all right I have about a cup of mayonnaise and that is about 2 tablespoon of um apple cider Vinegar and about a taable spoon of lemon Juice and we’re going to add about a tablespoon of Sugar and we’re going to taste it it needs a bit more sugar two tablespoons of sugar that’s better all right you can back off she used opposite ends of the spoon she did not double saw that I um you can you can back off on the

Vinegar if you like and just add 1 tbspoon of vinegar my taste MH that’s good huh M okay now we’ll come back over here add our dressing to our Bowl give this a bit of a TOs This is only going to get better as it sits I promise and this is a bit reminiscent of the Waldorf salads you remember from the’ 70s some people some people like to put uh marshmallows of course that’s like Watergate salad which has marshmallows and Cool Whip ew who likes

Cool Whip I can’t stand it all right the other thing we’re going to do is we’re going to build our salad I have some chicken breasts that I went ahead and I grilled off this afternoon and I’m going to build this salad and Molly is going to have it for

Supper because she has to eat early cuz she’s going to spend the night at a friend’s house and they’re going to go off and do some fun friend things now where’s my knife that I know I had right down there somewhere hm probably down there somewhere yeah probably yeah it is right

Here all right there we go wash that off now and if you’d like to see how I panser the chicken breast I’ll put a link on the screen you can go take a look look at that um the only thing I did different was I marinated them just

A little bit differently and today I’m going to go ahead and chop them and if you’re going to serve this to a crowd you should feel free to just chunk up all the chicken and go ahead and put it in the bowl with the rest of the vegetables that would be something

That would be you know for ease of serving and then we’re going to take some roma lettuce I can these bags I can’t stand they always pose a problem for me to get them open so we’ve got some organic Roma I’m just going to tear it put it in the

Bowl and you can plate these individually like I said you can plate them you can uh serve it all together with the chicken in it already you don’t have to serve it on a bed of greens I just think that it adds something a little bit extra to the mix

Now go ahead and add some of our Waldorf salad in here on top of our greens take some of our chicken and I think that looks like like a beautiful spring Supper and for those of you who are going to ask I got the place mat at Target so that is a little bit of a Twist on an old favorite Chicken Waldorf salad on a bed of Roma perfect for a nice warm weather dinner um you didn’t heat up

Your kitchen doing it you can cook that chicken on the grill it’s perfect all year long you’re always going to have access to those ingredients apples celery carrots some dried fruit and nuts you add whatever you like in there it’s going to be perfect you want to use

Walnuts instead of pecans go right ahead you want to use almonds you want to use a combination cashews would be beautiful in there so or what roast beef instead of chicken roast beef instead of chicken might be different but you know it’s up to you um leftover pork roast would be

Really delicious in there as well so you make that decision and you make it the way you like it so I hope you try it I hope you love it thank you so much for joining me in my kitchen today and until next time I’ll see You La