A chicken salad made with cooked chicken, celery, green onion, cold processed refrigerated dill pickles (like Grillo's) and dressed with a quality mayonnaise.
Grillo's Dill Pickle Chicken Salad
I love a good chicken salad, and my standby is still the one I lean on the most. It's a good solid deli-style chicken salad and I love it.
Since entering this food blogging experience many, many years back though, I've tried a bunch of different ones, so when I saw Elizabeth Heiskell making this one on social, I got a little curious.
Now. Pickles are a thing I do love in my chicken salad, but I use relish or pickle cubes usually and most often I lean toward a sweet relish.
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I have never been a huge fan of refrigerated pickles though.
I've tried the most popular refrigerated pickles but was never really super impressed to be perfectly honest. They are just underwhelming to me, limp and with not much flavor.
Off the shelf pickles that are then refrigerated when you get them home have always been my jam as to texture and taste.
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The social reel expanded on the simple 4-ingredient chicken salad in her cookbook Come on Over (#ad) containing only chicken, Cavender's, celery and mayonnaise, but, with the introduction of a cold processed refrigerated pickle I'd never heard of before - Grillo's brand - and both she and her family loved it!
Now, first things first. Grillo's doesn't know me from Adam's housecat, and this is not a sponsored post. It's just me telling y'all about my discovery of this pickle product and I paid for them myself.
For the rest of you Southerners that also didn't know (or am I all alone in that?), I learned that Grillo's line of pickles got their start back in 2008 when they sold them out of a wooden cart in downtown Boston. They are made with a ‘fresh pickling’ process, and cold pickled, so they have a nice crunch and because they are made, shipped and sold cold, they are natural, with no preservatives.
Okay, so by now I'm curious about what sets these pickles apart from standard dill pickles or pickle relish and their refrigerated competition. I found them right at my local market!
As always, I made my own adaptation of this version too.
Here's what you'll need to make my Grillo's Dill Pickle Chicken Salad:
- 4 cups cooked, shredded chicken
- 1 rib celery, finely chopped
- 1 large green onion, sliced
- 1/2 cup chopped refrigerated dill pickles (like Grillo's)
- 1 tablespoon pickle brine
- Fresh or dried dill, to taste, optional
- 1/2 tablespoon Cavender's Greek seasoning, or to taste
- 1 cup real mayonnaise, or to taste
Here's how to make it.
I have mentioned on the site here lately how I am purchasing most of my meats from ranchers locally and across the country rather than the grocery store. Good Ranchers is one of those sources where I'm buying chicken. Again... they don't know who I am and I am not sponsored by or affiliated with them financially in any way. Any products featured here on my website were purchased by me, out of my own pocket.
Good Ranchers offers quality, all natural meats that contain no antibiotics or hormones and they aren't plumped up with salt injections. Look at how nice these chicken breasts are!
I've provided the suggested poach in the recipe text below if you're starting with fresh, raw chicken breasts, though you could use any method you already prefer. I really love the Ready Chicken poaching method that I have here on my website because it produces a much more flavorful chicken breast than the traditional saucepan poaching method.
You can certainly use a store-bought already cooked rotisserie chicken, or any leftover chicken that you've baked or grilled as well. You'll need about 4 cups of shredded chicken for the proportions noted in the recipe. Add the shredded chicken to a large, lidded storage bowl.
You will immediately see that Grillo's are distinctly different at first glance from the big chunks of garlic and pieces of fresh dill mingling with the pickles. You can use any pickle you prefer too of course, although since I'm using Grillo's here, for this recipe I'm gonna recommend that you make this version using a refrigerated pickle, rather than shelf stable pickles.
You can use whatever kind of all-purpose seasoning you like or just stick with salt and pepper if you prefer, but I really do like the Cavender's (#ad) in this version.
Cavender's Greek seasoning {affil link} is a great all-purpose seasoning that has something like 13 separate seasonings and herbs in it and is a pantry staple for me. You may certainly substitute plain salt and pepper or use a seasoning salt like Lawry's instead.
Add the celery, green onion, pickles, brine, dill, Cavender's seasoning and mayonnaise.
For more of my favorite chicken salad recipes, check out the collection on my Pinterest page!
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