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Salad with chicken and pickles

Chicken and Pickle Salad

A tasty, hearty, good-looking salad made from simple ingredients. This layered salad with chicken and pickles is very easy to make — even the most inexperienced cook can handle it. It's the kind of salad you can serve not just as a side, but as a dish in its own right.

Ropotushka

Recipe author

Composition / ingredients

Servings:

Chicken breasts (fillet)

300

Carrots (peeled)

300

Pickles

300

Onion (peeled)

300

Green peas (canned)

150

Sour cream

150

Vegetable oil

Salt

Ground black pepper

Translation table of volumetric measures

Nutrients and energy value of the composition of the recipe

By weight of the composition:

Proteins 35 % 6 g

Fats 35 % 6 g

Carbohydrates 29 % 5 g

92 kcal

GI: 100 / 0 / 0

Cooking method

Step 1:

Ready to make a chicken and pickle salad? Gather all the ingredients. Breast fillet is the usual choice for this salad, but you can use another cut of chicken. The weights in the recipe are for already-peeled vegetables. Use a neutral, odorless vegetable oil. It's best to avoid very large cucumbers — they tend to be looser, more watery, and full of big seeds. And use a peas brand you trust; the flavor of the whole salad leans heavily on it.
Step 2:

Peel, rinse, and slice the onion into half-moons — or into quarters if the onion is large. Heat a skillet, carefully pour in half of the vegetable oil, and add the onion. Fry over low heat, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes. The onion should turn soft and translucent; don't let it brown. Transfer it to a sieve to drain off the oil.
Step 3:

Peel and rinse the carrots, then grate them on a julienne grater or, like me, cut them into matchsticks. Cutting them this way keeps their flavor and keeps them from soaking up too much oil as they fry. Fry the carrots in the same pan as the onion, stirring occasionally, until soft, adding oil if needed. It took me about 12 minutes over low heat.
Step 4:

Rinse the chicken fillet under running water, put it in a pot of lightly salted water, and bring to a boil. Remember that the pickles and peas are already salty, so go easy on the salt in the water. Cook over medium heat for 20 minutes after it comes to a boil. Then drain and let the chicken cool completely. Cut it into pea-sized cubes.
Step 5:

Cut the pickles into matchsticks like the carrots, then squeeze them gently and set them in a colander or sieve to let the brine drain off. Excess liquid can make the salad watery, which spoils both its look and its taste.
Step 6:

Be sure to drain all the liquid from the peas. Once everything is prepped, assemble the salad. You can toss it all together in a deep bowl, or build it in layers, spreading sour cream between each one. Add salt and pepper if needed. To my taste the pickles brought enough salt, so I didn't add any.
Step 7:

I layered the salad in this order: onion, chicken, peas, pickles, and carrot.

I always make a big batch of this salad, since everyone in my family loves it. Simple as the ingredients are, it's really tasty.
Instead of sour cream, you can dress the salad with mayonnaise — homemade is best. My husband prefers it with mayonnaise.
The salad looks neat and attractive if you cut all the ingredients into pieces of the same size and shape (cubes, for example).
Keep in mind that how you cut the carrots affects the final result: grated carrots turn to mush as they cook and blend evenly into the other ingredients, while carrots cut into matchsticks or sticks keep their shape.
Fry with an oil that has a high smoke point. Every oil is only good up to a certain temperature — its smoke point — beyond which it starts to burn and form harmful compounds. Unrefined oils generally have a low smoke point because they're full of unfiltered particles that scorch quickly, while refined oils handle heat much better. Whenever you fry, bake, or grill, reach for a high-smoke-point oil — refined sunflower, olive, or grapeseed oil are all good choices.