Hi, friends! The chicken salad FYCE posts got me thinking about various “salads” that basically are typically a meat and binder combination.
What’s your favorite and why?
Here’s what I came up with off the cuff —
- chicken salad
- tuna salad
- ham salad
- shrimp salad
- egg salad
- chickpea salad
I will admit I’ve never eaten ham salad, but I’ve seen it at deli counters so I know it exists. I’m deterred by the pureed looking texture of it. I’ve also never had shrimp salad, but maybe that’s more of a coastal thing and I’m too embedded in the Midwest?
Egg salad is something I’ve never liked, which is kind of weird because I fucking love hard-boiled eggs. Something about how the egg texture turns out in egg salad turns me off.
Tuna salad is one of those things I don’t mind but also I’m never like “yay, tuna salad! Just what I wanted!”
Chickpea salads taste great but I don’t like them on bread, more eat with a fork thing for me, which defeats the purpose of an (insert option) salad.
Chicken salads are my favorite, but really I think that’s because it’s so easy to use leftover chicken in them. And there’s better texture control than other options.
BONUS CONTENT
I’ve said before how much I hate mayonnaise. Guess what I use as a binder for my chicken salad or tuna salad? Sour cream or avocados, depending on what’s in the fridge.
My mom didn’t like tuna (except as sushi) so we had salmon salad sandwiches. I use the recipe my mom used when she made salmon salad sandwiches.
1 can of salmon removes the bone and skin.
A couple of diced pickles or sometimes she would replace with 1 or 2 tablespoons of relish
Capers (optional)
Juice squeeze from half a Lemon or lime (for the smell, something my mom is obsessed with eliminating-damn her sensitive nose.)
A dash or six of tabasco
1 cup of Sour Cream
1/2 the water/oil from the canMix together and then spread on whole wheat.
I’ve never had salmon salad, either!
Admittedly I never had canned salmon* until I moved to Alabama and a local diner made fucking amazing salmon croquettes.
*I think my parents just didn’t want to fuck around with bones and canned tuna was cheaper
I’m vegetarian, and most egg salad is meh, so I’m a little lost here. German potato salad that’s heavy on the mustard (no mayo, please) and incorporates boiled egg bits is also delicious, but not spreadable on a sandwich. Chickpea salad/balela is tasty, but eating the chickpeas with a fork is tricky indeed. I usually wind up mashing them to eat them.
So…perhaps another bean salad, like fava or cannellini, wins by default?
Also, I love your suggestion of avocado as a binder. I’ll have to give it a try.
I always mash chickpea salad. I thought most people did? Much better texture that way, and spreadable on a sandwich.
I love potato salad, especially German potato salad, though it doesn’t really belong in this list of sandwich type salads. I enjoy the occasional macaroni salad too.
I feel like potato and macaroni salad options are their own post!!!
You could do an exhaustive poll of exactly which potato salad. I can think of a dozen ways to do it off the top of my head.
Yeah there have been plenty of nights where my dinner has been mashed up avocado with either canned tuna or some leftover chicken!
One of my very first FYCEs was a recipe for German potato salad! It was about Oktoberfest but I think the only recipe I included was the one for German potato salad.
I’ll take a Caesar salad over all that, but if I have to pick one of those, Ms. Meme makes a chicken pesto salad that is great in pita or naan.
Oh I love basil, I can see that being amazing!
I’m currently in the midst of another round of macaroni salad.
I can do egg salad roughly once a decade. Tuna salad once every five years. I grew up in WI and we had shrimp salad every summer. I do enjoy a good potato salad (but not German). I have a recipe of my mother’s called Million Dollar Salad which I loved as a kid but I’m not entirely sure would hold up today.
Chickpeas are trash.
How do you hate chickpeas? They are soooo amazing! Chana masala, hummus, koshari all immediately come to mind as awesome chickpea meals!
I will agree that cooked from scratch chickpeas are far superior than canned, but that’s true of all legumes.
Asking how someone can hate chickpeas is like asking how someone can hate cow manure.
I hate egg salad, because I hate hard boiled eggs. I hate that when there’s a catered event with sandwiches, the vegetarian option is often egg salad. I end up just eating chips.
Tuna salad was actually the last meat I gave up, so I did enjoy it quite a bit. I didn’t eat other seafood, and at the time was kind of grossed out by mayo, but the combination was more than the sum of its parts. I now sort of imitate it by making a chickpea salad with crumbled roasted seaweed.
I never understand assuming vegetarians will eat eggs. I know some do, but plenty don’t.
Or cheese. Or pasta. I don’t want cheesy risotto yet again.
I like salmon as a croquette or salad, also shrimp or lobster, tuna because it is inexpensive and easy.
I will eat an egg and olive sandwich. Rarely. Like on leap years only.
My mother made a delicious ham salad. Which is odd because she was a terrible cook. She ground the ham (after baking it) in an old iron hand cranked meat grinder, added onions, mustard, sweet gherkins, and mayonnaise. The texture was not smooshy or slimy.
Chick pea salad is news to me, I will have to look up some recipes. I like bean salads, and layered bean salads. The carnivore eschews all bean, macaroni, or potato salads so I tend not to make them.
i dunno..isnt everything + at least one leaf of lettuce a salad?
giant ribeye steak..probably not very healthy…. giant ribeye steak + 1 leaf of lettuce = steak salad…healthy 🙂
(but i guess if i had to be serious…i quite like a smoked salmon pasta salad…with feta and pesto….. oddly enough…its very similar to my smoked salmon pasta with feta and pesto….but cold…and with lettuce)
Any cheese but feta! I spent half my life eating greek food and never want to eat it again.
Lobster salad is excellent – it’s what goes into lobster rolls. Now that summer is approaching and lobster season will be getting underway I’ll try to remember to do a recipe for lobster rolls.
If you like lobster never ever go out on a lobster boat. One look at what those mofo’s eat will turn you off them forever, well, that and the whole murdering your dinner before you eat it bit. Big nope!
I hardly ever make sandwiches at home. I often cube leftover meats and put on top of a salad, and a soft boiled egg on top of a salad is really good. If I’m going to have a sandwich I call the sub shop and order one!
I’ve mentioned before that I could never bring myself to boil a live lobster (like I would never wring the neck of a live chicken and then do whatever) but I have been at beach houses where friends have done it. It’s…really something.
My parents and I have done live lobsters (boiled) for Christmas dinner before in ye olde Midwest. Mainly because my dad liked to do a 20 lb turkey for three people and we finally convinced him that “fancy meal for 1 sitting” was better than “Jesus fuck not what are we doing with all this turkey.”
@sedevilc I call shrimps “lil cockaroaches of the sea” and lobsters “giant cockaroaches of the sea”