Delicious Tangy Chicken Salad

The Best Chicken Salad Recipe You’ll Ever Read

Everyone loves my Delicious Tangy Chicken Salad. This chicken salad has very simple ingredients that add great flavor and texture.

It is even better the longer it sits. The full, printable and Pinterest Pinnable recipe is at the end of this post.

You will have questions about some of the steps and ingredients, so peruse the following paragraphs for the information below.

Buttermilk Powder

The first ingredient you will question is buttermilk powder. I get this buttermilk powder on Amazon.

There are many brands. But you can also find this in most baking aisles at the grocery store. It is usually with the powdered milk.

This buttermilk powder gives a nice tangy flavor without adding liquid, because the last thing you want is watery chicken salad. I will link the one I use in my Amazon shop.

*I am required to tell you that Amazon does pay me a small commission if you use this link, but it is no cost to you.*

There are also many other options in grocery stores or on Amazon. One of the other recipes you can use this for is my French Quarter Salad Dressing. If you do not want to use this buttermilk powder you will be missing out, but you can add a little bit of powder ranch dressing mix.

It won’t be exactly the same and you must note that the powdered ranch is salt and some msg so it will add a different flavor.

You may want to adjust the celery salt if you use the ranch powder. I highly suggest the buttermilk powder, but I know how it is when you don’t have an ingredient on hand and you want to make something right away.

The Celery

I explain how I peel the celery in the full recipe. Explained in the post is how I cut the celery lengthwise so that I can make very small, diced pieces.

I love celery so I use a lot. You can add as much or as little of the celery as you like.

Peeling the celery makes it less stringy and offers a softer texture that, to me, is more enjoyable in a salad like this.

I also use the celery leaves in this recipe. I finely mince them so that they taste great but do not leave an odd texture. The leaves have an intense flavor, are good for your heart, are anti-inflammatory, and aide in digestion.

Stop throwing them away!

Pickle Juice

I love the tangy addition of the pickle juice in this delicious tangy chicken salad. You will find a jar of pickle juice in my fridge for lots of recipes.

I do strain this before adding it to the recipe.

You will see that you dissolve the buttermilk powder in the pickle juice before adding it to the recipe. This adds the tangy flavor to this tangy salad.

Rotisserie Chicken

Chicken breasts from a rotisserie chicken is what I use for this recipe. Cut the chicken from the bone after it has cooled in the fridge overnight.

I discard the skin and only use the white meat, but you are also welcome to use the dark meat. If you are intimidated by this step, you can order deli meat chicken and ask them to slice one or two pieces about 1 inch thick.

You will need about 3 cups of chopped up chicken for the recipe I included at the bottom.

OK, now that you’ve mastered chicken salad, are you ready for the perfect tuna salad and egg salads?