Spicy Chicken Salad: A little hot, but very cool

Hot giardiniera gives this summery Spicy Chicken Salad a little heat and big flavor. It’s great on sandwiches or on its own. Recipe below.

When the warm weather hits and the great outdoors beckons, we tend to get lazy in the kitchen. We still want good food, but we want it to be fast and easy to make and satisfyingly filling but not too heavy. Like chicken salad. To me, some leftover chicken and a little mayo is one of the great blank canvases of summer, ready to take on all kinds of flavors and personalities.

At the heart of this lively version is hot giardiniera, an Italian mix of pickled vegetables. You’ll find it in most supermarkets and some specialty stores. The mix of vegetables varies, but it always includes peppers of some sort. Other usual suspects are carrots, celery, cauliflower or broccoli florets, olives and pearl onions. Giardiniera is generally available in both mild and hot versions, although hot is relative, and we’ve sampled various brands over the years with varying degrees of success. There aren’t many national brands to speak of, so you really just have to try what’s available where you are. If it turns out to be less spicy than you like, adding a pinch of cayenne pepper to your chicken salad will turn up the heat for you. Also, if you have a choice, go for giardiniera that uses a mix of vinegar and water for the liquid, not one that includes olive oil. You’ll get fewer calories and a brighter taste.

And if you can’t find store bought giardiniera anywhere, recipes for making your own abound online. That sounds rather labor intensive to me, but to someone else, it might be a fun project.

I’ve adapted this recipe from one I found in Bon Appetit. It was part of an article on what prominent chefs like to cook at home. For this recipe, it said the chef [Mary—I forget her last name or the restaurant, sorry] uses leftovers from a purchased roast chicken. Not sure where she buys her gargantuan birds, but I used both legs and thighs and one half of the breast of my purchased roast chicken to come up with the 2-1/2 cups of chicken needed. Not exactly what I’d call leftovers.

You can use this chicken salad to make sandwiches, as I’ve done here. Just as often, though, we eat it as is, with no bread. Some fresh fruit or a fruit salad makes a nice side. When we had this over the weekend, Marion made delicious all fruit smoothies as an accompaniment. We felt very healthy and smug eating this lunch. Yeah, it had mayonnaise in it, but not much. Shut up.

Spicy Chicken Salad with Hot Giardiniera
Serves 4

2 1/2 cups diced cooked chicken, skin removed [see Kitchen Notes]
1 cup drained hot giardiniera from jar, chopped
1/3 cup mayonnaise [or light mayo]
1/4 cup [packed] chopped fresh basil
1 tablespoon giardiniera juices

The recipe calls for diced chicken. I cut it up into chunkier pieces than the standard dice, especially good if you don’t plan to make sandwiches with it. The giardiniera, conversely, comes chunkier than you need it for this dish—chop it into a rough dice. Combine chicken and next 4 ingredients in medium bowl. I didn’t have fresh basil, so I substituted chopped fresh parsley. Stir to blend well. TASTE FIRST, then season salad with salt and freshly ground pepper. The giardiniera probably adds plenty of salt, and its vinegary tang further lessens the need for additional salt. I added no salt to my latest batch. Serve.

Kitchen Notes

Chicken. I used a store bought chicken this time. Often I’ll roast extra chicken thighs when I’m making some for dinner to use later in this dish. You can also sauté thighs or breasts [or both] specifically for this dish and just chill them in the fridge.

Leftover giardiniera. First, it keeps for a really long time in the fridge. Chances are, you’ll like this salad well enough that you’ll use it up making more. One use we plan to make of it is topping a store bought frozen pizza some hectic night.

Also this week in Blue Kitchen, 6/4/2008

Pretty much nothing. We’re busy, okay? But if you happen to live in Chicago and want to see some cool art, stop by our opening. Other galleries in Chicago’s Flat Iron Building have openings going on too.