Hot Chicken Salad

Who says Paula Deen can’t come up with a healthy recipe once in a while? There isn’t even one stick of butter in this recipe!  All you Paula haters out there, give it up. Find something better to do. I love me some of Paula’s cooking. Most of it might not be the healthiest, but I’ll bet it’s the best tasting! I “like” my friend, Paula, on Facebook. And since we’re close like that, Paula posts recipes and this one caught my eye one day…..Hot Chicken Salad. Now doesn’t that sound tasty? And the picture looked pretty darn tasty too. As Paula says, “you eat with your eyes first” . This one looked pretty and made me hungry.  It is topped with potato chips. Yummy! Of course, I tried to make ours a little bit healthier and used Baked Lays instead of delicious regular potato chips. Feel free to go all the way with the regular chips. To tell you the truth, I think it would have tasted better with regular chips, but it was still yummy.

Okay, and if I’m going to be honest with my friends on my blog, Paula didn’t really make this recipe healthy, I did. I still love her though. I used reduced fat sour cream instead of mayo. Mostly because I can’t stand mayo and it makes me gag to think of eating it! But hey, if you like mayo, go for it. I’m sure you’ll love this recipe with or without the mayo.

Ingredients

• 2 cups cooked chicken breast meat, cubed
• 1 cup diced celery
• 1 small onion
• 1/2 cup slivered almonds
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1 cup mayonnaise (or sour cream)
• 1 cup grated sharp Cheddar
• 2/3 cup crushed potato chips

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a 13 by 9-inch baking dish with vegetable oil cooking spray.

Saute’ onion and celery in a tablespoon (or more) of olive oil until soften – this is really an option step. If you like your chicken salad really crunchy, you can skip this step and just combine in a bowl with the other ingredients.

In a large mixing bowl combine the chicken, celery, almonds, salt, pepper, lemon juice, mayonnaise, and cheese. Place the mixture in the prepared baking dish. Spread the crushed potato chips on top. Bake for 20 minutes, or until bubbly.

Sounds pretty easy, right? It was super simple and full of flavor. My husband loves cold chicken salad and he liked that this was a lot of the same flavors he loves…..except for the mayo. :-)


Give this one a try! I hope you enjoy it as much as Paula and I do.