Cranberry Cashew Chicken Salad

Thanks to a Costco trip, I have like a metric ton of chicken in my freezer. I bought that much because chicken is so freakin expensive at grocery stores in LA. Sorry dudes, but $6/lb is way too expensive for chicken. I think it's because of this Foster Farms monopoly. Sure, they say it's "all natural" or whatever, with no "plumping," but come on, it's all factory farmed chicken when you get down to it. Hello, where's the Purdue for $2.59/lb? Edged out by the chicken racket, that's where. Stupid Foster Farms mafia. Anyways, I have a lot of bulk chicken now. I love chicken, but you can only make so much baked or panfried chicken breast before you're just done. So, here's another way to use it. Another good thing is that you can make this with frozen chicken, so no "Oh eff, I forgot to thaw something for dinner...canned soup it is." The other good thing is that I usually have dried cranberries, cashews, and mayo around, so as long as I've got some celery in the fridge, I'm good to go.

I'm only slightly embarrassed to say that I spent a long time developing a favorite chicken salad recipe. It's not like this is complicated, but I tried many different ingredients before I settled on this combination. It's got that great crunchy/salty/sweet combination. I've also made this with almonds and dried apricots, but cashews and cranberries are my favorite together. I once made this for an event I catered, and shit was GONE.

I scaled it down because I didn't want to make that much. This amount is good for 4-6 servings.


Ingredients:

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (and water for boiling)
1/2 red onion
2 ribs celery
3 oz dried cranberries
1/2 cup cashews
1/2 cup mayo (approx.)
salt and pepper to taste
Bread, if desired

Special equipment - grater

1. Bring a pot of water to a boil and cook chicken breasts until cooked through and easily shreddable (about 15-20 minutes). Use 2 forks to shred. Let cool slightly (but not totally, because the flavors meld better if the chicken is still a bit warm when you add the other ingredients).

2. Grate the red onion (it will be kind of a pulp - gives a much more subtle flavor than crunching into chunks). Slice the celery ribs lengthwise and chop them at about 1/4". Give the cashews a rough chop. (You can buy cashew pieces if you want, but I usually keep the whole ones around for snacking. Plus, sometimes the pieces taste kind of dry and stale.)



3. Add most of the mayo to the shredded chicken and stir to combine. Add celery, dried cranberries, and cashews. Mix everything together. At this point, you will probably want to add the rest of the mayo (or however much it takes to coat and bind everything). Taste the mixture and add salt and pepper to taste. (I usually don't have to add much salt, if any, because the mayo and the cashews usually have enough salt.)



4. Pile on bread or a roll if you want. This is great on challah rolls and in pita, but regular sandwich bread lightly toasted is good too.




MEDIA PAIRING

The Kim Kardashian commercial for Carl's Jr's new cranberry apple walnut chicken salad. What a shit show. I love it. Technically it's not chicken salad, but salad with chicken in it, but whatevs.