INGREDIENTS
3 large chicken breasts – about 1 1/2-2 pounds (680 – 900g)
2 tablespoons (26g) Better than Bouillon chicken base
1/2 cup (45g) celery finely – diced
1/4 cup (45g) onion finely – diced
1 teaspoon (6g) salt – plus more to taste
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
1/4 teaspoon granulated garlic
1 tablespoon (14g) granulated sugar – plus more to taste
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 cup (220g) mayonnaise
New York Deli Chicken Salad Secrets – How To Make It The Best Way
Method of making
today we’re going to make New York deli chicken salad there are not too many ingredients as you can see let’s get into it right now New York deli chicken salad what does New York deli chicken salad mean well it means chicken with mayo and a lot of flavor like all New York Deli salads taste now why am I going to listen to you Jim you don’t know what the heck you’re talking about well I worked in about four of these places when I was young for a long time I don’t think much has changed in the New York Deli scene since I last worked there now I will tell you simply that unlike the potato and the macaroni that we did and the Cole saw this recipe varies from Deli to Deli
they all do it a little bit differently a lot of them use canned chicken we’re not going to use canned chicken today we’re going to use real chicken uh chicken breast and it’s not that canned chicken is not real chicken it’s just that we’re going to poach this make it very flavorful so it’s nice and tender too for our chicken salad so it’s not dry dry all right I have four chicken breasts here but the recipe just says 2 lb so sometimes you get a bigger breast and you only need three 2 lb that’s good we also have onion now recipe says4 cup of you know finely diced onion which is what I have here that’s more than 1/4 cup we won’t need all of it we’re going to soak it in water to get rid of some
New York Deli Chicken Salad Secrets – How To Make It The Best Way
of the really strong onion flavor two celery ribs that I finally diced 2 tpoon Dijon mustard this is a/4 teaspoon of white pepper so you know you can use black pepper you just will see a lot of black uh specks in it and then 1/ quart teaspoon of garlic powder or I actually have granulated garlic garlic powder is a little bit more garlicky than granulated garlic but pretty much you can use them interchangeably uh I have Helen’s mayonnaise here um helman’s helman’s Mayo not Helen H helman’s mayonnaise I should know that I live in the state that it’s the only thing that’s sold helman’s mayonnaise and this is actually the Mayo that is going to be used in all Deli uh New York Deli stuff but they’ll often use the big containers of it they’ll use uh what’s called decorator Mayo so it’s like even
thicker but this is fine this is going to suffice you can even use some other brands if you like it’s it’s going to be okay and then kind of my secret weapon here is 1 tbspoon of sugar now you don’t want to use the sugar you can take it out but it’s going to make it more flavorful unfortunately or fortunately whichever way you look at it delies use a ton of sugar in all of their salads that’s what made the other ones the potato the Colo the Mac that you all loved so great kind of unlock that secret for you along with the brining of it very simply take your onion um don’t need all this we’ll see when we make it after like I don’t have to use it all put it in water this is going to just take some of that really strong onion flavor out of it you could use red onion too which is a little milder as well but it’ll
New York Deli Chicken Salad Secrets – How To Make It The Best Way
just get rid of some of that have a pan large like high enough walls that you can fit your chicken in there so they’re sub completely submerged just fill it up with water okay and then the chicken base turn it up let’s bring it to a boil so this is 1 tbspoon of this uh better than bully on chicken base I use this in my recipes all the time this is just going to kind of amp up the flavor we want the chicken when it poaches to absorb it if you don’t have chicken base you can just like make sure your water is very salty so probably like a I would make it like a 2% salt level okay so it is boiling just mix it in let it all get distributed this flavor is all going to uh penetrate the chicken get into the chicken and make it really flavorful just get them in there gently and you just like as I said before in the beginning they need to be submerged you really ideally want it to be like one level cover back on okay so it’s boiling turn off the
heat and just take it off of your burner set a clock set a timer for 20 minutes okay 20 minutes is minimum you can let it go longer than that up to like 45 60 minutes but your chicken will be fine it’s just don’t uncover it just leave it covered 20 minutes minimum okay so it’s been like 22 minutes let’s see if it’s okay I should have a cutting board that has the grooves the juice grooves but I don’t I didn’t come prepared today so our poach chicken is very flavorful and we’ll just check one right away so listen it’s really hot right now and you could just you know you can get in there or you can let five five minutes elapse but what we want to do is we want to just break this chicken down into uh bite-sized pieces for our chicken salad kind of like that size but if you want you know you can go
New York Deli Chicken Salad Secrets – How To Make It The Best Way
finer really dig in there whatever way you like it you should do this while it’s still steaming hot like this because we want to put the spices on here and like the seasoning the the sugar and it will absorb better when the chicken is fairly hot okay so just spread it out now and then I have I have my 1/4 teaspoon of garlic powder or granul garlic uh 1/4 teaspoon of black pepper and the sugar so honestly it’s easier if I I should have really did this I just wanted to show you the ingredients but I should just have a Shaker it will distribute EAS here and to be honest with you even after this you might need even a little bit more sugar but you want to make those adjustments really kind of the next day or after a couple hours of it melding together so what I like to do now this is all on here you can put on you know put on bro gloves if you want just kind of move it around we just want all of that sugar and the pepper
and the gar granulated garlic to absorb into the chicken here so let this like sit for about 10 minutes till it cools down you can take like a a mes strainer it will essentially soften the bite of the onion so recipe coils with just a/4 cup of it which is less than that so we got our chicken in here here’s our Mayo which what was it a cup of mayo I think yeah so these these amounts are correct but you know why was I even telling you that it means that you might have to put a little bit more in especially the next day that is kind of The Secret of this it’s not even that good right now it has to be eaten at least a couple hours it needs to go in the fridge but ideally a day okay that’s our celery so the onion I’m only going to put in about that much maybe maybe that that’s it and I really ate my words
New York Deli Chicken Salad Secrets – How To Make It The Best Way
on this channel I used to make fun of the Bro gloves so listen if it’s a little you know how that extra water was in there the next day because you want to have this the next day all you got to do is you can just drain it a little bit mix a tiny bit more Mayo in there and it will thicken right up if you’re dead set you want to have the Mayo that the delies use just go to a restaurant supply store and you can buy it now listen I like the texture like that I like it to have a good amount of texture if you like it to be much more mushy you can just get in here and you can just start breaking some of these pieces apart just with your hands like this okay I actually do like a little bit of a little bit more Mash shredded but you do what you want I’m going to just go like this I’m saying when I get it from the deli I like it when it’s a little shredded yeah know one place I worked at they did it how I how I’m doing it here the other
place they use canned chicken I think a lot of places use canned so listen you you don’t want to eat it right now like this you don’t want to eat it when it’s warm or even like not cold you want this overnight but minimum get it in the fridge until it’s cold so a couple hours I am going to just taste it now and we can make a couple adjustments to seasoning if we want now that’s delicious already it’s going to be way better but it doesn’t need anything else cover it tightly with plastic wrap and we’ll put it in the fridge so it’s been about 2 hours I again ideally overnight it’ll be so much better it is cool now there’s a lot of liquid in here so and it’s going to be worse the next day you know you can mitigate this somewhat by after you poach it just really dry off the chicken which I didn’t do but you can also just
New York Deli Chicken Salad Secrets – How To Make It The Best Way
drain it which is what I am going to do right now so I just think like this and you’ll just be able to push some of that liquid out hopefully want it to be like more like a mass than really wet it’s almost like when you go to the get it in the deli it’s almost like dry well that’s what I’m saying so that’s it’s the Mayo to that they use but right here just even this process of doing this it you can see it’s going to start dry it gets to it get starting to get a lot drier yeah okay so I got a lot of liquid out of it you can see how much drier that looks now okay like this which is perfect because if it’s too liquidy it’s going to roll off the roll and whatnot but we want to taste it now make sure that it’s seasoned perfectly touch more salt and honestly you probably could do more sugar here but I’m not going to we’ll see what the taste test are thingss a little bit more black pepper not black pepper white pepper sorry and now because I
drained a lot you can mix a little bit more Mayo in here which is going to increase the creaminess of it I’m going to serve this up on the regular hard roll that James wants hey James H look at this s holy cow well um you want to put it down for a sec I think I didn’t do so bad instead of explaining then giveing my rating I’m going to give my rating then explain I am going to give this a nine out of 10 okay thank you not not a 10 out of 10 because if it was colder I would give it a 10 I knew that and because we were waiting 30 minutes yeah no but it’s it’s it’s very good the it tastes it tastes like chicken salad and I love chicken salad it’s it’s not just we were waiting it would it wasn’t overnight yeah be much better cold like I can’t I can’t I I can’t give it an e though cuz it’s still delicious but yeah cold is everything for chicken salad yeah but no it’s it it’s it’s really good like it’s it’s chicken salad like I I don’t know how else to describe it Oh I thought you going to be like it’s chicken salad everybody loves it some people don’t like like chicken salad yeah I mean ultimately the goal the main thing is you have to drain it the next day remember this wasn’t the next day and then put the Mayo back in and it will look like this which is exactly how it will look at a deli anything else to tell people no okay SC yeah I think it would be good in a wrap a wrap or melted Swiss I okay and that’s it’s I think it’s the best on this and you know these rolls
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