This curried chicken salad is savory, sweet, and a little spicy, with lots of crunch from grapes, cashews, and celery.

I originally shared this curried chicken salad on my salad column on Serious Eats in 2011.  All these years later, it is still one of my favorites. Savory, sweet, and a little spicy – with lots of fresh crunch from grapes, cashews, celery, and scallions – it is wonderful over greens or piled into a sandwich. The creamy dressing is flavored with curry powder, a blend of spices like coriander, cumin, turmeric, ginger, cinnamon, and cardamom, to name just a few. I recommend using poached chicken to make the salad, but roasted chicken breasts or rotisserie chicken work well too.

What You’ll Need To Make Curried Chicken Salad

As mentioned above, I use poached chicken for this recipe — it’s easy and the method yields super tender chicken. If you’d prefer to use roasted chicken, you’ll need 3 pounds bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts. Preheat the oven to 425°F and line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Arrange the chicken breasts skin-side up on the prepared baking sheet, and coat them with 1 tablespoon of olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast for 30 to 35 minutes, or until done, and then let cool.

STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTIONS

Make the dressing: In a medium bowl, combine the mayonnaise, sour cream, curry powder, honey, lime juice, and salt.

Whisk to combine.

Add the chicken, celery, grapes, scallions, cashews, and a pinch of cayenne pepper, if desired, to the dressing (if not serving immediately, hold off on adding the cashews so they stay crunchy).

Toss well, and then taste and adjust the seasoning, if necessary. (If using a rotisserie chicken, be careful when mixing so that it doesn’t fall apart too much.)

Chill the curried chicken salad until ready to serve.

Note: This recipe has been written by Jenn Segal and republished on MudMatter with Author’s Permission. Please find the original link here – Curried Chicken Salad.