This easy California Chicken Salad is incredibly creamy and delicious with cubed chicken, sweet grapes, and crunchy toasted pecans. The lightened-up Greek yogurt dressing is bright yet bold. It's the best salad for summer picnics or BBQs, or if you simply want a healthy meal for the week!
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🥗 What is California Chicken Salad?
This tasty salad is inspired by Whole Food's Sonoma Chicken Salad. Their recipe features chicken breast, grapes, celery, and pecans dressed in a creamy mayonnaise and poppy seed dressing.
This copycat recipe stays true to the classic - with a couple delicious twists! The biggest change is switching the base of our dressing from mayonnaise to full-fat Greek yogurt. It adds more protein and tang, but with all the creamy richness! We also add in a sprinkle of green onion for a little bite and color.
All in all, this flavorful California Chicken Salad is the ultimate summer salad! It's fresh, protein-rich, and bright with the best creamy dressing. Meal prep a large batch for lunch and dinner or bring it to an upcoming party or potluck. It's great as a dip or stuffed into a wrap for a hearty meal. The possibilities are endless with this classic chicken salad!
Why You'll Love It
- Healthy: This satisfying meal is full of fresh fruit, veggies, and a lightened-up dressing. It's also gluten-free!
- Versatile: You can really do anything with this dish. Place it on top of a bed of greens or use it to make a pita or croissant sandwich. You can also omit or include any additional veggies or add-ins!
- Easy: This salad is mostly prep and assembly. Using rotisserie or leftover chicken means you can have a healthy meal in just minutes.
🧂 Ingredients
- Cooked chicken: You can use canned, rotisserie, or leftover chicken from last night's dinner. If you don't have any pre-cooked meat, you can easily poach, roast, grill, or pan-sear the breast or thighs. Instead of dicing it, you can also shred it if you prefer.
- Celery: For fresh crunchiness.
- Grapes: Make sure to get seedless and feel free to use any color you'd like. Red grapes tend to be sweeter, while green grapes can be a little more sour.
- Pecans: Toasting the nuts ensures they'll stay crunchy even when dressed.
- Green onion: Not included in the original Sonoma Chicken Salad recipe. But I like how it adds a light onion flavor without the overwhelming spice you get from raw onion.
For The Dressing
- Greek yogurt: Our base for a no-mayo salad. I recommend using full-fat (3.5% milk fat or greater) to get as much creaminess as possible. Also, skim yogurts can have more sugar or additives to make up for the lack of richness and flavor.
- Dijon mustard: A good amount for tang.
- Honey: My favorite sweetener lately! It enhances the sweetness of the grapes while adding a floral note.
- Apple cider vinegar: A light, fruity vinegar to balance the dressing.
- Poppy seeds: A traditional ingredient in Whole Food's version. It adds great crunch!
Substitutions & Variations
- Replace pecans with your favorite nuts: almonds, walnuts, or pistachios would be great in this salad.
- If you don't have apple cider vinegar, try red wine vinegar or lemon juice instead.
- You can literally add anything to this. Find whatever leftovers you need to use up in your fridge. Jalapeños, Kalamata olives, dried cranberries, or avocado would keep it interesting!
- For more protein, try adding in crumbled bacon or hard-boiled eggs.
- Fresh herbs always make a big difference! Dill or tarragon would be classic additions.
- Want a fun and unique flavor twist for chicken salad? Honey mustard, Japanese mayo (Kewpie), lemon basil dressing, pesto, or ranch seasoning would be major flavor bombs.
🔪 How To Make The Best Chicken Salad
⬇️ Please scroll down to the recipe card to see full ingredient amounts and instructions.
STEP ONE: First, toast the nuts. If you purchased roasted pecans, you can skip this step. Heat a skillet over medium-low heat and lightly toast them for 4-5 minutes, making sure to stir often so they don't burn. Set aside and let cool completely.
STEP TWO: While the pecans are cooling, prep the remaining ingredients. Cube (or shred) the chicken, quarter the grapes, and thinly slice the green onion. For the celery, I like to halve them lengthwise and then thinly slice.
STEP THREE: Next, make the dressing. Combine Greek yogurt, honey, dijon mustard, apple cider vinegar, poppy seeds, salt, and pepper. Whisk and season to taste.
TIP: I recommend making the dressing in a large bowl so you can toss the remaining ingredients in and make it a one-bowl meal.
STEP FOUR: Add the meat, grapes, celery, green onion, and toasted pecans to a large bowl.
STEP FIVE: Then pour the dressing in and toss to combine. Let sit in the fridge for at least 30 minutes, best if overnight.
What To Serve With Chicken Salad
- Make an easy chicken salad sandwich! Use it as a filling between a bagel, croissant, hoagie, whole wheat bread, or pita.
- Serve some spoonfuls on top of kale, spinach, or mixed greens for a healthy yet filling salad. You could also use romaine lettuce to make lettuce wraps.
- Need a fun party dish? Make chicken salad sliders with Hawaiian rolls or a classic pinwheel using large tortillas.
- Serve it on its own as a dip. Pair it with fresh lettuce, crackers, or toasted baguette slices.
💭 Top Tips
- Make sure all the ingredients are cooled to room temperature before dressing it. Any hot meat or pecans will cause the dressing to "melt" off and become watery.
- Cut the ingredients on the smaller side. This is especially important if you're serving this as a dip or sandwich filling. The smaller pieces will make it easier to eat.
- If you plan to cook chicken for dinner during the week, make an extra batch so you can make this salad the next day. It's a great way to prep multiple healthy meals for the week.
- This salad is best served cold. Give it a few hours to marinade in the fridge - it'll become extra flavorful and delicious. You may need to add a little more salt after it's chilled.
- Don't leave this chicken salad out on the counter for more than 2 hours since the yogurt is perishable. If serving outdoors on a hot day (90°F or hotter), only leave it out for 1 hour max.
🥡 Storing & Freezing
Storing: Store any leftover California Chicken Salad in an air-tight container in the fridge for up to 5 days.
Freezing: I do not recommend freezing this since the dressing will not hold up well to freezing and thawing.
Make Ahead: The creamy dressing can be made 2 days in advance. For ultimate freshness, I recommend making this salad only 1 day in advance.
📖 Recipe FAQs
I love pairing it with more fresh, delicious summer dishes like Watermelon Beet Salad, Lemon Basil Rice, or German Potato Salad (Vegan). But it's very versatile and will taste great with pretty much anything!
This California Chicken Salad uses lean chicken breast, fresh grapes, celery, and green onion. It's loaded with vitamins, minerals, and nutrients to make this a protein-rich and satisfying meal.
You can truly use any type of cooked chicken! I almost always use rotisserie chicken for this recipe but if I don't have any, I prefer to cook some in the Instant Pot. Add 1 cup water to the basket and place a steamer basket inside. Season your chicken breast (frozen would work too) and place inside the steamer basket. Cook on High Pressure for 8-10 minutes (fresh) or 12-15 minutes (frozen), and let release naturally for 5 minutes. The cook time will depend on the size of the chicken.
🍽 Looking For More Chicken?
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📋 Recipe
California Chicken Salad
Ingredients
- ⅓ cup pecans chopped
- 3 cups cooked chicken cut into ¼" cubes; about 1-2 chicken breasts (I used rotisserie chicken)
- 1-2 stalks celery cut in half lengthwise and sliced; about 1 cup
- 1 cup seedless red grapes quartered
- 1-2 green onion thinly sliced
Dressing
- ½ cup full-fat Greek yogurt
- 2 teaspoon dijon mustard
- 2 tablespoon honey
- 1½ teaspoon apple cider vinegar
- ½ teaspoon poppy seeds
- ½ teaspoon salt plus more to taste
- ¼ teaspoon pepper
Instructions
- Heat a small skillet over medium-low heat. Add the chopped pecans and toast for 4-5 minutes, stirring often. Let cool completely.
- In a large bowl, combine Greek yogurt, dijon mustard, honey, vinegar, poppy seeds, salt, and pepper. Whisk together and season to taste.
- To the same bowl, add chicken, celery, grapes, green onion, and pecans. Stir everything together and season to taste. Let chill in fridge for minimum 30 minutes, best if overnight. Serve chilled.
Notes
- Chicken: You can use canned, rotisserie, or leftover chicken from last night's dinner - I recommend fresh over canned, if possible. If you don't have any pre-cooked chicken, you can easily poach, roast, grill, or pan-sear chicken breast or thighs. Instead of dicing it, you can also shred the chicken if you prefer.
- Greek yogurt: I recommend using full-fat (3.5% milk fat or greater) to get as much creaminess as possible. Also, skim yogurts can have more sugar or additives to make up for the lack of richness and flavor.
- Replace pecans with your favorite nuts like almonds or walnuts.
- If you don't have apple cider vinegar, try red wine vinegar or lemon juice instead.
- Make sure all the ingredients are completely cooled before dressing it to prevent it from becoming too watery.
- Don't leave this chicken salad out on the counter for more than 2 hours since the yogurt is perishable. If serving outdoors on a hot day (90°F or hotter), only leave it out for 1 hour max.
Simi
Can you use non fat Greek yogurt and omit the Dijon mustard?
Jessica
Yes you can! The flavor profile will change without the mustard (feel free to substitute with any other type of mustard) but you can leave it out.
Jeanette Marie Littleton
Another way, to make Chicken Salad.
Jessica
Thank you Jeanette!