Use this Southern Style Chicken Salad recipe with eggs to make a healthy chicken salad with pickles, onions and celery!
30 minutes
Beginner-friendly
You’ll Learn: How to poach chicken breasts for juicy, tender results
Worth It: High protein, meal-prep friendly, and satisfying for both lunches and snacks
Bonus: Customizable with any toppings and veggies
Why You’ll Love this Recipe
- Meal prep favorite – I love making this chicken salad recipe for meal prep! I throw together the simple ingredients in a large bowl on a Sunday and then enjoy it in my lunches or snacks all week long.
- Customizable – You can mix up your toppings to keep the flavor fresh and new. This chicken salad is a great recipe with crackers, in a wrap, on a bed of greens, on an English muffin, there’s no end to the options!
- High protein snack – This is a great way to have an easy high protein snack option with some crackers, tortilla chips or raw veggies.
What is southern chicken salad?
The classic ingredients for southern style chicken salad are hard-boiled eggs, relish, red onion, celery, mustard, mayo and spices. However, there isn’t an official traditional chicken salad recipe – different people use slightly different ingredients in their southern chicken salad.
I wanted to make a keto chicken salad so I opted to use chopped dill pickles instead of sweet relish and yellow mustard instead of honey mustard. Using these ingredients the carb count in this chicken salad is relatively low.
Serving Suggestions
This recipe makes the perfect southern-style chicken salad sandwiches on sandwich bread, lettuce wraps or creamy salads. I love to add a bit of cheddar cheese, a bed of lettuce, and some banana peppers for a good chicken salad sandwich.
This is the best chicken salad recipe to have as a side dish for your brunch table or for a party like baby showers. It’s hearty, and it goes great alongside fresh fruit salad and other brunch favorites like a croissant breakfast casserole or some honey butter biscuits.
Do you put eggs in chicken salad?
If you’re making a Waldorf chicken salad or some other classic chicken salad recipe, you may not want to put eggs in it. For this homestyle southern chicken salad, chopped hard boiled eggs are an essential ingredient.
The creamy yolks add extra creamy texture to this keto chicken salad. If you are curious about how long to boil your eggs, check out this post on how to make boiled eggs.
Ingredients
- Boneless skinless chicken breast – to keep this recipe simple, use boneless skinless breasts for cooking chicken
- Eggs – use your eggs to make hard boiled eggs
- Mayonnaise – mayo adds to the creamy salad texture of your chicken salad
- Yellow mustard – The yellow mustard is my favorite secret ingredient in chicken salad. I love the added punch of flavor. You could also use dijon mustard
- Red onion – red onions add lots of flavor and a perfect crunch
- Celery – I always love including celery in a classic southern chicken salad
- Dill pickles – dill pickles give a great briny flavor to your chicken salad
- Black pepper and garlic powder – there is so much flavor from the veggies in this salad that you just need a little bit of spice to finish it off
Substitutions
If you don’t like mayo in your chicken egg salad recipe, you can use Greek yogurt in this southern style chicken salad. Just sub in the exact same amount of Greek yogurt in place of the mayonnaise and follow the recipe as listed. You can also opt for a mix of mayo and sour cream. You’ll get a similar creamy dressing as a result!
You can certainly use canned chicken or rotisserie chicken from the grocery store for a shortcut to tender chicken in place of poaching chicken breast for this recipe. Or feel free to make your chicken in an instant pot with chicken broth instead.
For dill pickles, a pickle relish like dill relish or sweet pickles are a great option to substitute. If you don’t like red onion, you could substitute yellow onions.
Add any additional toppings or flavors you would like to your flavorful chicken salad! Green onion, fresh herbs like fresh dill, green grapes, red bell peppers, sunflower seeds, or crispy bacon would all be delicious. For a mayo-less option, create a homemade salad dressing with olive oil and a bit of lemon juice that you can use instead!
How to Make
Step 1: Poach chicken breast and hard boil eggs
To begin, add chicken breasts to a sauce pan with cold water. Place the pan on the stove and bring water to a boil over high heat. Cover pot and reduce to a simmer.
Then, simmer for 14 minutes and then remove the chicken from water once they reach an internal temperature of 165F. Hard boil the eggs by adding cold water to a sauce pan and bringing the water to a boil.
Next, add the eggs to the pan with the boiling water and boil the eggs for 10 minutes. Remove the eggs from the pot after 10 minutes and immediately transfer to an ice bath.
Step 2: Prep other chicken salad ingredients
Then, dice the red onion and celery and chop dill pickles into a fine dice. Mix together the mayo, mustard, pepper, and garlic powder.
Step 3: Mix it all together
Next, chop the hard boiled eggs and cube the juicy chicken breast into small pieces. Add the chicken and eggs to a large mixing bowl with the red onion, celery, dill pickles, and mayo mixture.
Finally, mix all of the ingredients together until fully combined. Serve chilled on lettuce or bread.
Step 4: Enjoy!
Storage
Once prepared, store extra chicken salad in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 4 days. Leftover chicken salad makes the best lunch all week long.
Check out these other healthy recipes for chicken salad!
- Bacon Broccoli and Ranch Chicken Salad – Mayo free
- Poppy Seed Chicken Salad – Mayo Free
If you liked this classic recipe for chicken salad, make this southwest chicken salad next!
You can find the full recipe below. If you make this recipe, please rate and review it in the comments, or share it with me on Instagram!
You can find the full recipe below. If you make this recipe, please rate and review it in the comments, or share it with me on Instagram!
Email Recipe for Later
Recipe
Southern Style Chicken Salad
Ingredients
- 1.5 lb boneless skinless chicken breasts
- 2 eggs
- 2/3 cup mayonnaise
- 2 tsp yellow mustard
- 1/4 cup diced red onion
- 1/2 cup diced celery
- 2 tbsp diced dill pickles
- 1/4 tsp black pepper
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder
Instructions
- Add chicken breasts to a sauce pan with cold water. Place pan on the stove and bring water to a boil. Cover pot and reduce to a simmer. Simmer for 14 minutes and then remove the chicken from water.
- Hard boil the eggs by adding cold water to a sauce pan and bringing the water to a boil. Add the eggs to the pan with the boiling water and boil the eggs for 10 minutes. Remove the eggs from the pot after 10 minutes and immediately transfer to an ice bath.
- Dice the red onion and celery and chop dill pickles into a fine dice. Mix together the mayo, mustard, pepper, and garlic powder.
- Chop the hard boiled eggs and cube the chicken breast. Add the chicken and eggs to a large mixing bowl with the red onion, celery, dill pickles, and mayo mixture.
- Mix all of the ingredients together until fully combined. Serve chilled on lettuce or bread.
Nutrition Information
This website provides approximate nutrition information for convenience and as a courtesy only. Nutrition data is gathered primarily from the USDA Food Composition Database, whenever available, or otherwise other online calculators.
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