SouthernBite.com’s Stacey Little is in the kitchen adding dill pickles to a classic chicken salad.
Hey y’all. It’s Stacy with southernbite.com. Welcome back to the kitchen. Today I’m going to show you how I took one of my favorite things, dill pickles, and incorporated it into something else that I love, chicken salad. This is my super easy recipe for dill pickle chicken salad. Now, to start, I’ve got about four cups of chopped cooked chicken. When it comes to this step, you got a couple options. You can certainly cook your own chicken, cool it, chop it up. I love to grab some rotisserie chicken and use that. It adds some flavor and makes the process really easy. The other thing that I love that’s available in the grocery store these days is packs of the rotisserie chicken that’s already been shredded up. It makes this process super easy. It lasts in the fridge and it’s just a simple shortcut that you can use here to make this even easier. To that, I’m adding this is about two ribs of celery that I finally diced. It’s about a half a cup. I’ve got about a quarter of a sweet onion that I also finally diced. That’s about 1/3 of a cup. And I like to dice these veggies pretty small because I don’t like that really big crunch. A little crunch is good, but you don’t want too much crunch in this. And now the star of this recipe, dill pickles. This is about a cup of dill pickles that I’ve diced. I like to use the refrigerated dill pickles. I feel like the crunch there is a little bit better than some of the shelf stable pickles, and I just like the flavor a little bit better. Now, an optional ingredient that I’m going to add to this is a little fresh dill. About a tablespoon. You could also use dried dill if you wanted to. We typically talk about a 1:3 ratio when we’re talking fresh herbs to dried herbs. So, if we’re using one tablespoon of fresh herbs, you’d need about 1 teaspoon of dried herbs. Again, this just provides a little freshness and is totally optional. You can choose to add it or not. To make our dressing, I’ve got about 3/4 of a cup of mayonnaise. And keeping this super simple, I’m going to add about 2 tablespoon of the pickle juice from those pickles. Just whisk this together. And I like to use a tangy mayo um because we don’t want to add too much sweetness to this necessarily. So opting for a tangy, savory mayo really just works better in this case. I’m going to add this right to our ingredients here and then give this a stir. Now, this is one of those recipes often times you’ll see a chicken salad that is good in the fridge for a little while. This isn’t really one of those recipes because those pickles have a lot of moisture. You know, cucumbers have so much water in them. And when we mix all this together, that dressing is going to start to leech some of that moisture out of those pickles. So, you may find that if you make this too far in advance, you may end up with a runny dressing. So, this is really one of those things that’s made best right before you eat it. If you need to make it in advance, what you can do is prep everything, mix your ingredients, don’t add the pickles until right before serving. That way, it doesn’t give you time for all that moisture to to leech out of those pickles and end up with a runny salad. Folks, you can find this super easy recipe with tons of great tips and tricks in the recipe post, too, about to make this recipe a success. All you need to do is head over to southernbite.com. We’ve got a simply southern TV section right on the homepage where you can find this recipe and tons more. Y’all enjoy. Now, Mary and I have said many times before that one of our favorite parts of this job is getting to sample everything that Stacy cooks. With that being said, let me assure you the dill pickle taste in this dish is not overwhelming. Now, if you choose to make this with a rotisserie chicken, you may not even need to add salt and pepper. Stacy says the important thing is to taste test before adding seasoning. Plus, you should only add them right before serving because the flavors can change while it’s waiting in the fridge. Mary and I are so glad you joined us for Simply Southern today, and we hope you will again next week when we’ll visit a type of farm you’ve probably never seen. These farmers are growing lavender, and you’ve been found guilty of watching Simply Southern. Your sentence is a night in the old jail in Monroval. But don’t worry, the accommodations are cozier than what you know from Otis and Histance with Andy and Barney and Mayberry. That’s because this jail is now a unique Airbnb. I’m Mary Wilson. And I’m Kevin Worthington. We look forward to seeing you then.
Dining and Cooking