Chicken Salad
3 cups chopped cooked chicken
1 cup mayo
1 cup chopped celery
1/4 cup sweet relish
1 cup sliced grapes
1/2 cup toasted sliced almonds
1/4 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper
Mix together and keep refrigerated.
How chicken salad worked us to death
We could not make enough chicken salad!
We slow-roasted 40-80 pounds of chicken breast overnight, every night. And we used about 20-40 pounds of that in our chicken salad each day. It was good, delicious in fact, don’t get me wrong. But we made the stuff twice a day at least and it still wasn’t enough. And yes, we did increase our roasting and making of chicken salad as demand grew. All 4 of us – Rebecca, Joanne, Sue, and myself – could make a quadruple batch of the stuff in our sleep.
The recipe came about due to some customers of the former owner requesting healthier options. Seeing as how a lot of his recipes and ours contained cream and butter and cheese and creamy soups, I can understand why folks started putting on a little weight eating with us.
So JoAnne, a healthy eater herself, formulated the concoction on the fly one day, just remembering how she’d whipped up some for her family; and using what the owner had on hand.
We had this in our refrigerator from the first day we opened due to how “easy” it was to whip up and how much a quadruple batch would make for the case. We’d make half with celery. We’d fill at least 2 shelves with one-pound packages and it’d be gone before noon, either from customers stopping by to grab it on their way to work or people e-mailing a request that we save them a pound or two for when they could stop by. We had a dedicated refrigetor bay for “holds”. I’d begun typing up a daily offering of what we had and e-mailing that each morning to all our customers who requested to be on the list. They’d then e-mail or call with requests to hold a certain dish or two. It was simple and worked well, except for the times I forgot to check the e-mail around 4 (super busy time of day). Those who’d waited until later to let us know to hold food thought I was to check it routinely so their food would be ready and waiting. (Yes, I should’ve.) They’d arrive to pick up their dish and it wouldn’t be there as we sold out of things pretty quickly. But being the awesome group of customers they typically were, they’d find something else to grab for dinner.
One day, a new customer came in and walked right to the chicken salad without even looking at anything else. Rebecca happened to be out front arranging shelves and said hello to the lady, asking if she could help her.
They lady replied, (I must say in a condescending, smirky way), “ Oh no. I’ve just been hearing about how good your chicken salad is.”
Rebecca smiled and said, “It is good. We sell out every day.”
The lady was eyeing the package and said, “Well, it doesn’t look that special.”
Rebecca blinked and her smile grew tighter. I mean, what a thing to say!
Rebecca replied, “Well, it’s our most popular item.”
And walked to the counter to check the lady out.
She set the package on the counter and said, “Oh, I’m just buying it so I can figure out how to make it myself. This is expensive.”
We sold a full pound (yes, we weighed every package) for $3.99. And that wasn’t leaving much room for profit because we used quality ingredients and a lot of them.
Now, Rebecca was a super nice person. Very calm and forgiving and very rarely had any showing of a temper of any kind. She always went out of her way to make others feel comfortable and was never argumentative or aiming to have the last word. She wasn’t a confrontational person. But this lady had just hit one of her last frazzled nerves from a long week of aggravation.
She picked up the salad and didn’t ring the lady up. As she held the pound of deliciousness, she smiled sweetly and said, “Well, let me just tell you how to make it.”
The lady looked super surprised.
Rebecca continued, “You slow cook your chicken for 6-8 hours. That’s important because you want it to be easy to shred and that’s what makes it just melt in your mouth. Each pound of chicken salad has 1.5-2 chicken breasts in it. And while you’re chopping or shredding it, make sure you get out any of those gross grisly or fatty chicken pieces that are on the chicken breast. You get high quality mayonaise, you’ll need a half-cup of that, and sweet relish, about 1/8 cup. It just tastes better. Buy sliced almonds. Not whole ones because just chopping them is harder and just doesn’t give the right bite. You’ll need 1/4 cup of those and then toast those in a single layer on about 325-350 degrees for 4-5 minutes. Then shake them around so they evenly toast on the ends and other side. Continue toasting another 4-5 minutues. Chop up 1 cup of celery if you like it in there. Buy seedless red grapes and hand slice 1/2 cup of those in half. Now, don’t chop those or they get all squishy in the salad and it does affect the taste. Add salt and pepper and you’re done. Now, I’m guesstimating on those amounts because we make those big silver bowls (she was pointing) full of it about 3 times a day and package those 15 pounds up in single pounds so our customers can just enjoy it without all that hassle.” Then she smiled sweetly.
JoAnne, Sue, and I downed our heads and tried not to laugh. That’s as sarcastic and “mean” as Rebecca ever got.
The lady was standing and blinking, literally with her mouth open. She opened her purse and said, “Go ahead and ring me up. I think it might be easier just to buy it.”
Rebecca rang her up and wished her a good day.
That lady also became a regular customer. The thing she bought most? Chicken salad.
For a crowd: (Makes 15 pounds)
30 cups chopped cooked chicken
6 cups mayo
12 cups chopped celery
2 1/2 cup sweet relish
9 cups sliced grapes
5 cup toasted sliced almonds
2 1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/4 tsp. pepper
