When I first got out on my own, I could cook four things: bacon, eggs, toast, and cheekun salad. I'd learned the chinese method to cook a juicy breast: bring water to a boil, drop in one or two breasts, slap on a lid and kill the heat; let it set for an hour, and you have perfectly juicy (if bland as hell) chicken breast, which I'd zip up in my $60 Oster with mayo and sometimes celery.
Haven't made it in decades. This past week I noticed a recipe for "Smoked Chicken Salad" in the Texas BBQ Monthly newsletter, decided to give it a go:
Smoked Chicken Salad
330 grams smoked chicken*
60 grams celery (1 stalk, halved lengthwise and finely chopped)
30 grams pickles, finely chopped
80 grams mayonnaise
10 grams sugar
20 grams pickle juice or apple cider vinegar
Chopped fresh herbs like parsley, tarragon, or cilantro
A few dashes of your favorite barbecue rub
Juice from 1/8 lemon
Salt to taste
Debone the chicken (if necessary) and pull, chop, or mince it. In a large bowl, combine the chicken, celery, and pickles.
Combine the mayonnaise, sugar, and pickle juice, and mix well. Pour the dressing over the chicken/celery/pickle mixture and mix again. Add herbs, barbecue rub, and lemon juice, and mix again, adding salt as needed for taste. I like to let the chicken salad spend a few hours in the refrigerator before eating. Enjoy.
*Be sure to weigh the amount of chicken you use to get the correct ratios for the dressing. The quantities are shown by weight because I swear to you that it is so much easier to cook using a scale when measuring is necessary, and it’s time you bought one.
Are you texans using metric now? (four thighs weighed 315 grams, so I went with that and eyeballed the rest). I thought the dressing was a bit bland, thought about adding some minced chipotle en adobo, thought that might clash with the pickle, but saw on another ewetube someone used curry powder; I added a tsp and that was the ticket (I also left out the sugar, and forgot the rub).
Toasted some weird buns, made two sammiches w/the salad, tomato, lettuce, and cheese on one and a bit more mayo on the other (the mayo was better). These were good.
As I mentioned on my "Question for CenTex Smoker" thread, this time I dropped a small chunk of cherry into the bottom of the LBGE bowl, below the KAB, then lit the lump top-dead-center as I usually do. I didn't notice any "dirty" smoke coming out of the egg as I had when burying the chunk off to the side, so I think this may be my new method; the cheekun tasted great and the chunk was used up at the end of the cook.
While browsing videos on chicken salad (Retirement: Life in the Fast Lane) I came across Sam the Cooking Guy's:
He did a neat trick that I'm also gonna try. He started with a pre-rotisseried chicken from the supermarket, and then carefully peeled the skin off in one (well, two) pieces (insert some Hannibal Lector morbidity here), layed them flat on a wire rack, and then hit them, both sides, with a blowtorch, making the skin deeper brown, toasted, and amazing; oh Hellz Yeah! He used that skin as the top layer of his sammich (bacon on the bottom. Bacon?) and I bet that's delicious!
This is definitely into my rotation, especially this summer when it gets hot.
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