Dill-Tzatziki Chicken Salad

I bring my lunch to work almost everyday, and I tend to eat either chicken salad or tuna salad on cucumbers.  Since I was pretty impressed with my last attempt at making chicken salad, I thought that I'd give it another try.  I found this recipe on pinterest, and since I'm such a huge fan of tzatziki sauce, it caught my eye.  Instead of using their tzatziki recipe, I went with my own because it's my favorite.  Unfortunately, I don't think that the garlic cloves that I used were large enough to offset the freakin' huge cucumbers that I picked up at Trader Joe's yesterday (or maybe it's just my taste buds) because it tasted a bit more bland than normal.  Normally, I'm not an add-dill-to-my-tzatziki kinda gal, but I decided to add it and think of it more as a part of the chicken salad and less a part of the tzatziki.  The original recipe calls for red onions, but I substituted a sweet onion because that's what I had on hand.  All in all, it was pretty good, and if you are a fan of tzatziki, I'd definitely give it a try!

Here's what I did....

Dill-Tzatziki Chicken Salad

Ingredients

2/3 cup Katie's Tzatziki (I saved the rest of it for snacking with veggies)
2 teaspoons chopped fresh dill
1/4 cup finely chopped onion (I used a sweet one, but I think red onion would work better)
2 cups shredded Rotisserie Chicken (skinless) 

Directions

Combine the first three ingredients in a medium bowl.  Stir in chicken and coat with sauce.

Enjoy!

Saucy Chicken Salad

Don't let the title fool you...this chicken salad is not runny at all.  It's just got a kick to it (in the form of a little horseradish) to make it what I'd call saucy.  With summertime strolling into our neck of the woods, I woke up with chicken salad on my mind.  Everyone is so different when it comes to chicken salad preferences.  Some like grapes in it.  Some like dill relish in it.  Some like it with no mayo at all.  Rick and I discussed a couple of ingredients that we felt were essential (it's gotta have celery for some crunch!), but I was still unsure of which direction I wanted to take.  I don't think I've ever really made chicken salad before (or at least anything that stood out in my mind) so as usual, I hit the internet looking for ideas.  I came across two recipes that caught my eye and inspired me to play with them a bit to come up with something worth sharing with the world.

The first one that I liked is almost perfect on its own.  The big problem with it is that I am not a fan of boiled eggs (sliced or diced or whatever) in my chicken salad or potato salad for that matter.  I'm also not crazy about the grapes either.  What really intrigued me, though, was mixing the half and half with mayo for the dressing.  What a great way to kill that overpowering mayo tang and create something that is more creamy!  The second one that I found was from my one of my old stand-by recipe sites, www.myrecipes.com.  Adding a little horseradish to chicken salad would give a unexpected kick to plain ole chicken salad. 

In order to make the whole process go faster, I bought a rotisserie chicken at Publix this morning so that I wouldn't have to deal with cooking any chicken.  Doing so also provided us with some meat to snack on while I was pulling the meat.  For the nuts (gotta have that crunch!), I used chopped walnuts because I had them in the refrigerator.  Pecans would work just as well if not better.

This recipe isn't totally fabulous for my diet (especially with the half and half), but I was really impressed with the final product.  I'm looking forward to having it for lunch during the shortened work week.  I may even share a little bit with Rick. 

Here's what I did....

Saucy Chicken Salad
Ingredients
1 cooked rotisserie chicken, meat pulled from the bones and skin removed
1/3 cup minced green onion
2 celery hearts chopped
the juice of 1 lemon
1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts

Dressing
2/3 cup light mayo
1/4 cup half and half
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
3 tablespoons prepared horseradish

Directions
In a large bowl, mix chicken, green onion, celery and lemon juice together.  Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes to 1 hour.

In a separate smaller bowl, mix dressing ingredients together.  After the chicken mix has been in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes, combine the dressing with the chicken mixture and nuts.  Cover and chill for an additional hour before serving.

Enjoy!

PS:  Sorry for the pathetic excuse for a pic up there, but my desktop has died and our netbook is on its last leg.  I'm relying on my iphone for pics for now.

PSS:  Did I mention that we are engaged????  So excited!!!!!