Apricot Curry Chicken Salad: What we do for friends

A couple of weeks ago, friend JEL was in charge of church snacks.  She decided in an impromptu moment to do a curried chicken salad. (Her version is very similar to mine.)  I offered to help her, as making chicken salad for 50 people sounded like it would be a big job.  She accepted my help but told me that if I couldn't help, it wasn't a big deal.

The Saturday before church, I showed up at her house ready to help in anyway possible.  What I ended up doing was chopping celery, red onions, apples, cilantro and shredding chicken (six large rotisserie chickens from Costco).  Preparing the salad took much longer than we had anticipated, even with two very fast cooks in the kitchen.  JEL kept muttering under her breath, "I can't believe it is taking this long."  The difference between making a chicken salad with one rotisserie chicken and six chickens, is a couple of hours.

After all that chicken salad, and eating it the next day, I sort of wanted to back away from chicken salads. However, I opened the fridge today only to see the rotisserie chicken I had bought the day before.  I leaned towards making a soup, but there was just too much delicious meat on the chicken so I decided to make a chicken salad.  A different one.  I stared into my pantry for a bit, trying to figure out how to make it different, and then remembered seeing in Gale Gand's book Brunch, a chicken salad where she put in some dried apricots.  I decided to play around with that a bit and came up with a curried chicken salad with some apricots in it.  It was really yummy, especially on top of some crackers.

Curried Chicken Salad with Apricots
serves 4-6

3 cups cooked chicken, chopped into bite sized pieces (I use a mix of dark and white meat off of a Costco rotisserie chicken)
1/2 cup of celery, chopped
1/4 cup shallots, finely chopped
1/2 cup of apricots, cut into thin slivers
3 tablespoons curry powder
1/2 cup of mayonnaise (you may need a 3/4 cup if you like it creamier)
2 tablespoons fresh cilantro, finely chopped
1/4 cup sliced almonds, optional

In a large bowl gently mix all the ingredients together.  Season with salt and pepper if necessary.  Cover and chill for 30 minutes.  Serve either on crackers or as a sandwich.

Printable recipe

Curried Chicken Apricot Salad with avocados on a soft roll

A great book, and the one that inspired me with the apricots.

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