Easy Chicken Salad Recipe with Eggs

Why You'll Love This Easy Dinner

• It's got healthy, wholesome ingredients; and, like our favorite roast beef lettuce wraps, it's fairly low carb (without the bread), so it's a really healthy option for Dan, who usually eats it on a bed of lettuce or bed of spinach.
• You'll love the crisp, tarty flavor the apples bring to chicken salad sandwiches.
• Like this list of colorful salads, chicken egg salad can serve as the main dish at lunch or dinner; it can also serve as an appetizer with crackers or a side dish at a party or potluck.
• This is one southern meal that's easy to make ahead of time or on the fly, especially when your chicken and eggs are already cooked.

Ingredients and Substitutions Notes:

You'll need just a few simple ingredients to make egg chicken salad.

• Cooked Chicken – You can cook fresh chicken, or you can make this chicken salad recipe using canned chicken or store bought rotisserie chicken from the grocery store. We've made this a canned chicken salad recipe many nights when we just didn't remember to get chicken out of the freezer. Leftover chicken also works well.
• Hardboiled eggs – Probably the easiest way to boil your eggs is to put them in a saucepan and cover them with water; bring the pan to a boil over medium to high heat on your stove, and once it's reached a full rolling boil, set a timer and continue to boil for 6 to 8 minutes. Another way you can boil eggs is with an electric egg cooker; this is quite the handy tool for making easy hard-boiled eggs, and I love that it also poaches eggs. Finally, you can also boil eggs in the Instant Pot, which is super easy and simple to do, as well.
• Celery – I prefer to finely mince this up really well and make it smaller. It adds a lot of crunch to chicken salad.
• Apple – My grandma used to make her chicken salad with apples and pickles, and it was always so delicious.
• Green onions – Again, it's all about flavor. All of these ingredients really meld together to create an amazing flavor to the salad.
• Mayo and Mustard – If you don't have mayonnaise, you can use Miracle Whip; but we much prefer the flavor that real mayonnaise gives to chicken salad. Mustard just gives a little extra kick.
• Chopped Walnuts – These are totally optional, and a lot of times, we'll substitute chopped pecans instead.
• Bread – Again, this is optional. The best bread for chicken salad, though, is definitely sourdough. Toasted sourdough makes a delicious chicken salad sandwich.

• Mince up dill pickles or sweet pickles to add into the ingredients. We love adding in dill pickle. I imagine bread and butter pickles or sweet relish would taste really good too.
• Swap out the green onions for red onion; it gives a spicy kick to this southern chicken salad.
• Instead of mayo, you can use Miracle Whip or plain Greek yogurt.
• Instead of regular mustard, using Dijon mustard or stone ground mustard.
• In place of walnuts, you can use pecans or almonds.
• Add chopped up grapes for a yummy chicken salad with grapes.

Now Mix up the Salad

1. In a large mixing bowl, mix together the cooked chicken, hard-boiled eggs, celery, apple, walnuts, and green onions. 
2. Next, measure out the mayo and mustard, and mix it into the chicken mixture. If you like a “wetter” chicken salad, you can add more mayo.
3. If you feel like it needs it, you can add in a dash of salt and pepper. Otherwise, it's ready to eat and enjoy! 

Then Make It into an Open-Faced Chicken Salad Sandwich

I like to do the following, but you can change this up to make it your own.

1. Toast a piece of sourdough bread (or gluten-free bread).
2. Spread on a little Miracle Whip.
3. Add a small pile of lettuce, and pile on the chicken salad to make the most delicious open-faced chicken salad sandwich recipe ever. It's so tasty and so good!