The Chicken Salad I Make On Repeat All Summer
Crazy easy, tastes like a high end bakery, but nutritionally lighter with balanced protein + fiber
If you’re anything like me, lunch is always the hardest meal. I don’t know why, but it always is! And my kids pay for this bc I feed them last minute quick foods or whatever I have in the freezer, which is never optimal nutritionally. Between prioritizing my time with my babes, the heat making me not want to touch the oven, and my own energy depleated postpartum, I need something I can make once and eat off of for days. Oh and my picky toddlers must like it, because I don’t have it in me to make multiple lunches 🙂
This chicken salad is one thing I lean on again and again, and my kids always always go for it. This and a good pasta salad. In fact I recommend making both once and double batch it so you have easy satisfying lunch all week. I make this every summer, but honestly even during the cooler months bc it’s just a good easy protein and fiber that feels good knowing it’s in the fridge and ready to go.
It tastes like the good bakery style chicken salad you’d pay $14 for. But it’s not heavy, made with way better sourced ingredients, butter nutritional profile, and all around really easy to make.
What you need
– 5 chicken breasts, boiled and shredded (crazy easy method below)
– 2 celery stalks, diced small
– 1 apple, diced small (I like honeycrisp and cosmic apples. Make it 2 apples if you want it a little sweeter, my kids like it that way)
– 1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt
– 1/4 cup mayo
– 1-2 tbsp stone ground mustard
– 2 tbsp fresh lemon juice (keeps the apple from browning!)
– Salt and pepper to taste
The chicken hack that changed everything
I get asked about the shredding being time consuming a lot. You do NOT need to hand-shred chicken with two forks. I did used to do this, and having a cyst in my wrist, I def paid for it. lol but I don’t do that anymore, there’s a really simple and effective method to shred chicken to perfection. Here’s what I do:
1. Boil your chicken breasts until they’re cooked through, about 12-15 minutes depending on thickness. If you have a meat thermometer, make sure the chicken reaches 165 F internal temp.
2. Add 1 cooked chicken breast at a time to the blender. Pulse for exactly 1 second per breast. Remove, and repeat with remaining chicken.
3. That’s it. It comes out shredded fine and fluffy, exactly like that bakery-style chicken salad texture, and it takes way less time and effort than shredding by hand.
Plus it has a consistent texture throughout. It’s just perfect! When I first started doing this it felt too easy like I had to be missing something. But I was t, you’re not. It’s just a smart easy way to make shredded chicken 🙂
Put it together
Combine your shredded chicken, celery, and apple in a bowl. In a separate small bowl, whisk together the Greek yogurt, mayo, and mustard until smooth, then fold that into the chicken mixture. Season with salt and pepper, squeeze of lemon if using, and chill for at least 30 minutes before serving — it’s better the longer it sits.
Why this version works harder for you
A few small swaps here do a lot:
Swapping most of the mayo for Greek yogurt cuts a good chunk of fat while adding protein back in. Greek yogurt also has gut-friendly probiotics, which is a nice bonus.
The apple and celery are great for crunch. And they’re anlso adding fiber, where the traditional version has basically none. Fiber is the thing that slows down how fast your body absorbs sugar from a meal, which matters more than people realize at lunch specifically. The early afternoon energy crash a lot of us blame on “being tired” is very often just a blood sugar swing from a lunch that was mostly refined carbs with no protein or fiber to slow it down.
Pair that fiber with the protein you’re already getting from the chicken and the yogurt, and you’ve got a lunch that’s doing the actual job of a lunch: keeping your blood sugar steady, keeping you full past 3pm, and keeping your energy level instead of spiking and crashing it. That’s the whole philosophy behind pretty much everything I make around here. I obsessed over creating food that tastes as good or better than originals, AND does something for you nutritionally.
Serve it on its own, over greens, in a wrap, or on real sourdough. 🙂
