Easy Chicken Salad Recipe with Eggs - Adventures of Mel (2024)

Why You'll Love This Easy Dinner

• It's got healthy, wholesome ingredients; and, like our favorite roast beef lettuce wraps, it's fairly low carb (without the bread), so it's a really healthy option for Dan, who usually eats it on a bed of lettuce or bed of spinach.
• You'll love the crisp, tarty flavor the apples bring to chicken salad sandwiches.
• Like this list of colorful salads, chicken egg salad can serve as the main dish at lunch or dinner; it can also serve as an appetizer with crackers or a side dish at a party or potluck.
• This is one southern meal that's easy to make ahead of time or on the fly, especially when your chicken and eggs are already cooked.

Ingredients and Substitutions Notes:

You'll need just a few simple ingredients to make egg chicken salad.

• Cooked Chicken – You can cook fresh chicken, or you can make this chicken salad recipe using canned chicken or store bought rotisserie chicken from the grocery store. We've made this a canned chicken salad recipe many nights when we just didn't remember to get chicken out of the freezer. Leftover chicken also works well.
• Hardboiled eggs – Probably the easiest way to boil your eggs is to put them in a saucepan and cover them with water; bring the pan to a boil over medium to high heat on your stove, and once it's reached a full rolling boil, set a timer and continue to boil for 6 to 8 minutes. Another way you can boil eggs is with an electric egg cooker; this is quite the handy tool for making easy hard-boiled eggs, and I love that it also poaches eggs. Finally, you can also boil eggs in the Instant Pot, which is super easy and simple to do, as well.
• Celery – I prefer to finely mince this up really well and make it smaller. It adds a lot of crunch to chicken salad.
• Apple – My grandma used to make her chicken salad with apples and pickles, and it was always so delicious.
• Green onions – Again, it's all about flavor. All of these ingredients really meld together to create an amazing flavor to the salad.
• Mayo and Mustard – If you don't have mayonnaise, you can use Miracle Whip; but we much prefer the flavor that real mayonnaise gives to chicken salad. Mustard just gives a little extra kick.
• Chopped Walnuts – These are totally optional, and a lot of times, we'll substitute chopped pecans instead.
• Bread – Again, this is optional. The best bread for chicken salad, though, is definitely sourdough. Toasted sourdough makes a delicious chicken salad sandwich.

• Mince up dill pickles or sweet pickles to add into the ingredients. We love adding in dill pickle. I imagine bread and butter pickles or sweet relish would taste really good too.
• Swap out the green onions for red onion; it gives a spicy kick to this southern chicken salad.
• Instead of mayo, you can use Miracle Whip or plain Greek yogurt.
• Instead of regular mustard, using Dijon mustard or stone ground mustard.
• In place of walnuts, you can use pecans or almonds.
• Add chopped up grapes for a yummy chicken salad with grapes.

Now Mix up the Salad

1. In a large mixing bowl, mix together the cooked chicken, hard-boiled eggs, celery, apple, walnuts, and green onions.
2. Next, measure out the mayo and mustard, and mix it into the chicken mixture. If you like a “wetter” chicken salad, you can add more mayo.
3. If you feel like it needs it, you can add in a dash of salt and pepper. Otherwise, it's ready to eat and enjoy!

Then Make It into an Open-Faced Chicken Salad Sandwich

I like to do the following, but you can change this up to make it your own.

1. Toast a piece of sourdough bread (or gluten-free bread).
2. Spread on a little Miracle Whip.
3. Add a small pile of lettuce, and pile on the chicken salad to make the most delicious open-faced chicken salad sandwich recipe ever. It's so tasty and so good!

Should chicken egg salad be cold or warm?

I'll answer how to store it in the next question, but you can eat chicken salad while it's still warm from just making it… Or you can eat it cold from the fridge. It's delicious either way.

How should I store chicken salad with eggs?

It should definitely be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Chicken salad will usually keep for 2-3 days in the fridge.

Why do you put eggs in chicken salad?

We add hardboiled eggs to chicken salad because eggs give a little more oomph, a little more protein, a bit of a creamy texture, and a lot more flavor to chicken salad. They're also very filling. If you are intolerant to eggs or allergic to eggs, you can make chicken salad without eggs. However, just know that it won't quite be the same; it loses some of the texture and flavor that chopped up hardboiled eggs give to the salad.