Paleo Chicken Salad

A recipe for Paleo Chicken Salad made with simple ingredients that pack some serious flavor? Sign me up!

To this day, I still remember my first encounter with chicken salad. It was in front of the deli case at Kroger, while grocery shopping with my mom. Monumental, huh?

I was a terribly picky eater growing up, and I can’t imagine what would have drawn me to trying chicken salad on such a whim….Oh yeah, probably the fact that it was in a sample case. YOU KNOW what I’m talking about – those displays that have free samples speared on toothpicks or stored in small cups. Yep, that was my first experience with chicken salad, and from that moment on I was hooked. I remember my mom being so surprised that this child, who had sustained herself on deli ham and strawberries for years, actually liked something new.

Other meaningful encounters I’ve had with chicken salad? I’ve had a few… My hometown’s hospital cafeteria actually had really great chicken salad that my mom would pick up from time to time to bring home. And in college I found great satisfaction in the chicken salad at Marti’s at Midday in Athens, Ga. I still dream about that one, honestly.

The most ironic part of it all is that I actually don’t love mayo. It was a condiment I never cared for and never consumed, and I used to pride myself in that. Oh, you don’t like mayo, Clara? NOPE. NEVER HAD IT, NEVER CARE TO HAVE IT. So, imagine my surprise when I found out what the main ingredient in chicken salad was besides the chicken itself…. Ha. Joke was on me. After the initial shock and time spent reevaluating who I was as a person, I grew to accept the fact that maybe I didn’t hate mayo, so long as it was only in chicken salad and nothing else.

And yes, I even went through that phase when people started to realize that Greek yogurt could be used in place of mayo in recipes; you can find the result of that chicken salad recipe HERE. SUPER yummy, and I highly recommend using plain siggi’s for that one, if you are able to tolerate and consume dairy.

I’ve unfortunately had to cut back on my dairy intake in the last year (or else I turn into the “before” photo of a proactiv commercial — I have pictures to prove it), and thus had to drop the ol’ Greek yogurt swap. After once again reevaluating who I was as a person, I decided to revert back to mayo. You know, give it a second chance. We all deserve second chances, right? However, rather than using your ol’ run of the mill mayo made with soybean oil, I opted for a “Paleo” version, made with avocado oil from Primal Kitchen Foods! It has a really fresh, light flavor that I’ve found I prefer over typical mayo, and I love that it’s made with whole food ingredients that don’t require excessive processing.

Let’s dig in to the recipe for this Paleo Chicken Salad, shall we?

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Serve this Paleo Chicken Salad on top of a bed of greens to keep it Paleo, or sandwiched between fresh baked bread (I’m personally a fan of sourdough), or even as a dip with some fresh veggies or crackers. I’d argue that chicken salad is one of my favorite springtime recipes 🙂