In the kitchen with Kelley: Best Mother’s Day fancy chicken salad

Do you like your chicken salad plain or fancy? By fancy, I mean with grapes and walnuts?

It may seem silly, but since I was a kid, to me, chicken salad with nuts and fruit was reserved for special occasions… like a Sunday brunch for Mother’s day. That’s why, to this day, I still refer to it as “fancy” chicken salad, at least at home and among family, to differentiate it from traditional chicken salad, like you’d have on a sandwich.

The great thing about being an adult is that you can eat “fancy” whenever you want. So even though I eat this recipe throughout the year, I still like to whip up a big batch of it to enjoy with the special ladies in my family on Mother’s Day.

Recently though, I discovered a way to cut down on the prep time — and it actually gained me more compliments on my fancy chicken salad…

Instead of cooking the chicken myself, I’ll grab a freshly-cooked rotisserie chicken from the deli. The cooked skin easily slides off and the meat just falls off the bone.  The texture is smooth and I prefer it to those perfectly cubed squares of firm chicken you find in store-brought chicken salad.

I hope you and your mother, grandmother, daughters and sisters enjoy it on your special day coming up soon!