This Amish chicken salad recipe is deliciously healthy and made with whole food, simple ingredients. Homemade butter mayonnaise, freshly baked chicken, crisp onions, and sweet apples make this Amish recipe perfect for old fashioned chicken salad sandwiches!
Why You Will Love This Recipe
Easy
This chicken salad recipe is so simple to make. To begin you make amazing fail-proof butter mayonnaise by blending hard boiled eggs and soft butter. Next, Chop up your baked chicken breasts, onions, and apples, then throw everything together in a large bowl. Combine thoroughly and enjoy!
Healthy
This delicious chicken salad recipe is much more healthy than many popular recipes. Other recipes include ingredients like miracle whip or mayonnaise that is made with highly processed ingredients, but this recipe only includes ingredients that could be found on a traditional Amish homestead.
Delicious
The crisp and savory onion pairs wonderfully with the sweet apples and tangy apple cider vinegar. Creamy butter-mayonnaise makes the best chicken salad with a rich flavor that ties everything together. Add it to freshly baked sourdough bread for a healthy, hearty and delicious meal any time of day!
Amish Inspiration for This Recipe
While researching Amish chicken salad recipes, I found that other recipes included unhealthy mayonnaise from the grocery store. I wondered…how would the Amish actually make mayonnaise, a crucial ingredient for a classic chicken salad recipe? While some Amish communities might keep store bought seed oils on hand nowadays, traditional Amish cooking would use animal fats like butter and lard instead. It turns out you can make mayo with butter…and it’s amazing!
Other ingredients found in this recipe are more foods that could be found in traditional farming communities like in the Amish country, such as apples, onions, eggs, and chicken!
What Kind of Chicken to Use?
I have found that using solely white meat creates the most flavorful and creamy chicken salad. Dark meat does not absorb the moisture and lock in the flavor like white meat does, and is better used for other recipes. Feel free to use the white meat from a leftover roast chicken, and if you don’t want to cook a whole chicken you can simply bake raw chicken breasts in the oven.
What Kind of Onions to Use?
My favorite type of onion for chicken salad is red onion, but yellow onion also works well. Green onions make a great garnish!
What Kind of Apples to Use?
It’s best to use a sweet variety that is crisp, rather than a sour or softer variety. Try fuji, honeycrisp, pink lady, or another sweet and crisp variety.
Substitute for Apples?
Grapes are a great way to substitute apples, with a unique flavor and texture. Green grapes, red grapes and black grapes all work well!
How to Serve Amish Style Chicken Salad
One of my favorite ways to serve this chicken salad is with freshly baked sourdough bread, making a great chicken salad sandwich. There are so many other ways to enjoy chicken salad, like on crackers, over a salad, on a bed of lettuce, in a tortilla wrap, as a dip with vegetables, or even on its own!
How to Store This Homemade Chicken Salad
This chicken salad can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 4 days, or in the freezer for up to 4 months. Keep in mind that freezing may affect the texture of the chicken salad.
Troubleshooting
The chicken salad isn’t creamy and is too chunky: make sure to dice chicken, onions, and apples into very small pieces for the creamiest, best results.
The chicken salad tastes bland: this probably means you need a little more salt and possibly a splash more of apple cider vinegar.
The mayonnaise is too thick and isn’t getting creamy: add a little more water to the blender.
Where to Buy High Quality Chicken?
You can find high quality frozen chicken breast in bulk on Azure Standard! You can also find great deals on bulk organic produce like the apples and onions needed for this recipe.
How to Make Amish Inspired Chicken Salad
Add hard boiled eggs, softened butter, sour cream, water, apple cider vinegar, mustard, celery seed, salt, and black pepper to a high speed blender and blend until creamy, stopping to scrape the edges with a rubber spatula occasionally.
Dice chicken breast, onions and apple into small pieces, about 1/8 inch cubes.
Add chicken mixture to a large bowl with the mayonnaise mixture and give it a good stir, thoroughly combining all of the ingredients until it reaches as a creamy consistency.
Cover the bowl and place it in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour before serving to allow the flavors to meld and the moisture to be absorbed into the chicken pieces.
Garnish with sliced green onions if you like, and enjoy!
Easy Amish Inspired Chicken Salad (Healthy Recipe)
Equipment
- 1 chef knife
- 1 rubber spatula
- 1 high speed blender
- 1 large bowl with lid
- 1 Cutting board
- 1 Vegetable peeler
Ingredients
- 1 to 1 1/2 lb baked and cooled boneless skinless chicken breasts (or the breasts from 1 whole baked chicken)
- 1 small red or yellow onion (or about half of a medium sized onion)
- 1 small or medium apple
- 3 hard boiled eggs (to make easy mayonnaise sauce)
- 1 tbsp dijon mustard
- 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- 1/8 tsp celery seed
- 1/8-1/4 cup filtered water
- 1/4 cup sour cream
- 1/4 cup softened butter
Instructions
- Add hard boiled eggs, softened butter, sour cream, water, apple cider vinegar, mustard, celery seed, salt, and black pepper to a high speed blender and blend until creamy, stopping to scrape the edges with a rubber spatula occasionally.
- Dice chicken breast, onions and apple into small pieces, about 1/8 inch cubes.
- Add chicken mixture to a large bowl with mayonnaise mixture and give it a good stir, thoroughly combining all of the ingredients until it reaches a creamy consistency.
- Cover the bowl and place it in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour before serving to allow the flavors to meld and the moisture to be absorbed into the chicken pieces.
- Garnish with sliced green onions if you like, and enjoy!
