Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Avocado Chicken Salad

When you click on this weeks FNCCC chef and then select "low-calorie" or "low-fat" only 10 of over 1200 recipes pop up. Can you guess who it is? Paula Deen! I made her Banana Pudding last fall, so I decided to do a more savory dish this time. I made some alterations, so watch for my notes in italics.

Avocado Chicken Salad Sandwich

Avocado Chicken Salad
Courtesy Paula Deen

Ingredients
Salad:
3 cups cooked, diced chicken
3 cups cooked white rice
2 avocados, peeled, diced, and tossed with 1 tablespoon lemon juice
3/4 cup chopped onion (I used one very small onion)
1 cup mayonnaise (Since the dressing below also includes 1 cup of mayo, I completely left this out)
1 to 2 teaspoons pepper (I went for a few grinds of freshly ground)
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley leaves
Thick, crusty bread, multi-grain or sourdough, for serving
Lemon wedges, for garnish (I'm just not that fancy so I didn't garnish mine with lemons!)

Avocado Dressing:

1 large avocado, peeled and mashed with 2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 cup mayonnaise (I used yogurt mayo and probably only did about 3/4 cup)
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/3 cup chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon salt
Dash cayenne pepper

Directions

Dressing:

Place all ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth. Chill and serve alongside chicken salad. (I mixed this in with the salad itself instead of serving on the side)

Salad:
Mix all ingredients and chill. Pass with avocado dressing (again, I mixed the dressing into the salad because I ditched the mayo in the first group of ingredients). Serve on the crusty bread.

THE VERDICT: We both liked this. It's a bit different but not too bad! I think I'll use a bit of vinegar in the dressing next time because it was a little sweeter than I expected. I think that if I'd used regular mayo that wouldn't have been an issue though, so keep that in mind. It also could've been due to the fact that I forgot to salt the dressing and was just salting the salad afterwards.

5 comments:

Susie said...

Looks great!!

Alea Milham said...

This sounds really interesting! I have wanted to find a way to get more avocados into our life, but I don't like guacamole.

I have a Paula Deen cookbook and I only use it at the holidays when I am going to be blowing my diet anyways. :-)

4 Lettre Words said...

Wow...that's a different take on chicken salad! I love all the ingredients, tho.

Sarah said...

I never thought of avacado (or rice) in my chicken salad but it really works! Would be a great spring lunch.

Sonora said...

The food on your site looks incredible!! I am going to have to look around and try some of these! I think I will start with this one. You had me at avocado!
Thanks for stopping by my blog on the blog-trot. I love finding new people and new blogs!

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