I think right now it's just chicken; that's the way to go. It's inexpensive; you can cook a lot of it ahead of time, and it freezes well. There are so many different parts of chicken that you can use.

And I think having a lot of good chicken recipes under your belt is just a helpful thing to have to get through the day.

1) Classic Carol Chicken Salad Copycat

This is great. I think the main thing is to never skip the celery when it comes to any sort of chicken salad, turkey salad, or egg salad, or any of those sorts of things. Never skip the celery, and if you have the celery that still has the leaves on it, if you get just a couple of the inner ones that are like a pale yellow and chop those up and throw those in, those are great, but be careful because sometimes they can be quite strong.

You could also use walnuts here; that would be great, as would almonds. If you have a nut allergy in your household, pepitas or pumpkin seeds are quite good, and they're relatively inexpensive if you can find them in the bulk section of your local grocery store.

2) Dixie Chick Chicken Salad Copycat

This one looks pretty similar to the last one, minus the nuts. You can add the garlic powder. Onion powder is quite nice here too, or if you want to, paprika.

Fresh chopped dill or even dried dill is quite nice for a chicken salad.

And I know this might be controversial, but dried cranberries are also great here. This would go well on a wrap-kind of situation or a big flour tortilla with some Romaine. Would make a really nice wrap.

3) Sassy Scotty Chicken Salad Copycat

There's a lot of cooked, chopped chicken here, and I think I would be remiss not to mention that you could make all of those ahead of time and freeze them. Or just have them on hand in the refrigerator, and that's a really good time saver. Having some cooked crumbled bacon around is always good.

Whenever I have extra bacon, and somehow it didn't get eaten, I will put it in the food processor to just chop it up, and then I'll throw that in a plastic bag and put it in the fridge. It keeps for a while, and it's nice to have around to just add flavor to things. The ranch dressing looks great.

I would maybe add blue cheese here because you've got the bacon.

4) Olivia’s Old South Chicken Salad Copycat

I think a bit of chopped red onion would be nice in this one.

And the hard-boiled eggs, just make sure when you're hard-boiling them not to overcook them, because there's nothing worse than when you overcook a hard-boiled egg, and then the yogurt turns a yellow color or a grey color. That's no good. So I normally do, depending on the size of the egg, a 12-minute boil, and that's coming straight from the fridge and going directly into the boiling water.

You can also use a spicy yellow mustard or a whole-grain mustard would be nice.

5) Jalapeño Holly Chicken Salad Copycat

I think if you added some chopped herbs to this, it would be pretty good: onion powder and chopped herbs like parsley or dill. And pickled jalapeños are just a great thing to have around. I like to buy cans of them and then put them in a Tupperware and keep them in the fridge.

They keep for a while, and they're really nice to be able to add flavor to things, and they're quite inexpensive.

6) Cranberry Kelli Chicken Salad Copycat

This one, I would add an acid of some sort, maybe a couple of tablespoons of red wine vinegar, because you've got the dried cranberries and the honey, which is gonna be pretty sweet. Or rice vinegar is also good because it has a very neutral flavor, but some sort of vinegar, I would say, should go into this. But the cranberries, I love cranberries in the chicken salad.

I was just saying that in the earlier thing. You could also replace that with dried cherries.

7) Fruity Fran Chicken Salad Copycat

I will have to admit that I've never been to this place. If you're gonna add pineapple to something. I try to buy a fresh pineapple because the pineapple that comes in a can is so sweet.

But everything else here looks really good. Again, I think you might want to add a little bit of acid here. Apple cider vinegar, that'll also work, or actually a lemon, because you've got diced apple in here, and otherwise you're running the risk that the apple could turn brown, and that wouldn't be great.

But I could also see doing all this and then adding some curry powder, just standard curry powder, to the whole thing. They would add a really nice color, and I think that it would complement all these fruits really well.

8) Fancy Nancy Chicken Salad Copycat

This is good overall. I would add some chopped dill to it, and again, an acid like lemon or red wine vinegar would be good. You could put some walnuts instead of the pecans, but either one, even when you buy nuts from the store and they say they're toasted, you'll really benefit from toasting them a little bit more because it brings out the flavor in them.

Getting nuts from a store that were toasted properly will really add a nice extra layer of flavor to this.

9) Barbie-Q Chicken Salad Copycat

I think this one could benefit from some onion powder. And depending on how sweet your barbecue sauce is- because I know some of them can be quite sweet- if you can get a more vinegar-based barbecue sauce, I would recommend that. Definitely the smoked paprika.

Regular paprika would work too, but I think the smokings of the paprika would be really great, and I would actually up the amount that you're putting in here of the smoked paprika. And maybe add some sliced green onion too.

10) Broccoli Salad Copycat

I love a good broccoli salad. You can take out the sunflower seeds and put in pretty much any other nut, but I really like pepitas, especially if you roast them with a little bit of soy sauce in the oven first. They're a nice little salt bomb.

Bacon strips are great. Blue cheese is really good in a situation like this. Take out the cheddar cheese; replace it with blue cheese.

And yeah, it is really important to let this sit for a little bit in the fridge because the apple cider vinegar will soften the broccoli. You can also add some shredded carrot. It's a nice color, and it adds a little bit of sweetness.

11) Grape Salad Copycat

This is the type of salad that could work really well if you put some toasted, sweetened shredded coconut on top. I would also add a little bit of cinnamon with the brown sugar or Mandarin oranges.

12) Pimento Cheese Copycat

I love this recipe. I've made a version of this before, but I didn't have pimentos, so I used these Hungarian pickled peppers. They're called Mama Littles; that's the brand, and they're pickled and then marinated in oil.

If you can find those, they work really well in this, and add some onion powder, but just as it is, I think it's also great.

I like to take it out of the fridge a little bit before guests come because you do want it to be chilled, but it's easier to dip things into or spread on things like crackers or whatever if it's not rock hard right out of the fridge.

13) Loaded Potato Soup Copycat

I would swap out some of the chicken broth here for beer because I just love a beer and potato soup. It would be easy enough as long as you're not cooking for anybody with a gluten allergy. You can also use vegetable broth if you wanna take out the meat.

Shredded cheddar cheese is great.

You can also play around with what kind of cheese you use. I really love a smoked Gouda or something like this, or an aged cheddar cheese. I wouldn't do entirely aged cheddar cheese, but a sharp aged cheddar cheese; that's a really nice flavor.

And you can blend half of this to make it extra creamy. And definitely serve with some crusty toasted bread.

14) Creamy Chicken Soup Copycat

I would glaze the pan here. After you've cooked the onion and celery, put in the garlic and flour; after that, glaze with some white wine and just cook it down a little bit, and then start adding all of your other liquids. And some herbs would be good.

Some fresh thyme or rosemary would be ideal, or even if you just have a little bit of dried Italian seasoning.

15) Classic Chicken Salad With Celery

Sometimes I like to do a quick pickled shallot for stuff like this. When you're throwing together all these things before you start doing that, just get out a mandolin or a really sharp knife and thinly slice some shallots, put them in a bowl, toss them with brown sugar and black pepper, and then squeeze a lemon on top of that and just smoosh it around a little bit. Let it sit for like 15 or 20 minutes, and it would go really well on top of a chicken salad like this.

And I would say put this on a baguette. Get a whole baguette, put all of your chicken salad on it, and then you can close it and slice it into sandwiches. That's what I would do.

16) Chicken Salad With Red Grapes

I would say you wanna put some chopped parsley, maybe some chopped dill, and a squeeze of lemon. You can use green grapes here. If you have some pears that are ripe but not too ripe, you could swap out the grapes for pears.

17) Chicken Salad With Toasted Pecans

You could take out the pickle relish, swap the Dijon for a whole-grain mustard, and add some of your pickled shallots from the last thing I said. Of course, you can always swap pecans for almonds or walnuts, and add some onion powder.

18) Chicken Salad With Sweet Pickle Relish

I think this one could really benefit from a little bit of fresh chopped garlic, because you've got the sweet pickle relish, so you're kind of going for a tangy something. And then if you have a little bit of garlic, that would be nice. Maybe you could even add a finely chopped red bell pepper; that would be nice.

Serve it with some crackers.

19) Chicken Salad With Ranch Seasoning

This could be fun with maybe some shredded carrots. Also adds a nice little crunch and some color. Fresh herbs are great.

20) Chicken Salad With Shredded Cheddar

Shredded cheddar cheese is great, but what if you took that out and instead put feta cheese and used yogurt, a little bit of yogurt, and some cucumber? Don't use a pickle relish for that. That's a completely different recipe than this is, but you could also just swap out the cheddar for some Parmesan.

21) Chicken Salad Lettuce Cups

I like to serve things that are gonna be lettuce cups, with the lettuce leaves on the side and then whatever the filling is gonna be. I personally like to eat lettuce cups one bite at a time, so I'll tear off a little piece of lettuce and use that to pick up whatever I'm gonna eat.

I just don't like the way it looks on the plate, and I think it can be a total mess. Especially if you're serving at a party and people are trying to move around, or they don't have it; they're not sitting at a table with a plate in front of them, it can turn into a mess.

22) Chicken Salad Croissant Sandwiches

Yeah, this looks great. I love a croissant, especially if you have the time to butter and toast it in a skillet. I just cut them in half lengthwise and throw them in the skillet with some butter.

That just makes it amazing.

Lettuce is great. I would say that romaine is a really good one here because it's a sturdy piece of lettuce and it will keep the chicken salad from getting everything soggy. And I would also say don't make this until right before you're about to eat it.

I think this could really go for any of the other chicken salad sandwiches or chicken salad mixes that have been in this article. They could all go in a croissant or some nice crusty bread, and the best way to make it really special is to butter and toast it in a pan.

Keep reading

• Curried Chicken Salad
• 20 Copycat Chicken Recipes for Restaurant Cravings at Home
• Leftover Chicken Recipes for Busy Weeknights