Chicken Parm Salad Sandwich

Over Labor Day, I had a weekend get-a-way to Arizona where I was joined by 6 other friends. It was our girls’ weekend. We decided to pair up and cook some meals so that we wouldn’t be eating out the entire weekend. I paired up with Michelle and we had lunch so we decided to make a Rachael Ray chicken salad. We doubled the recipe..

Here’s the recipe from RR’s website:
http://www.rachaelray.com/recipe.php?recipe_id=2803

This was my first experience with rotisserie chicken, and I was quite pleased. Michelle and I had 2 chickens to work with, but it wasn’t too bad. She worked on getting the skin and bones off and then I shredded up the chicken. We decided to omit the mint in the recipe and used dried parsley instead of fresh. But since basil is my new favorite flavor, we got some fresh basil like the recipe called for.

After we had all the chicken shredded up, we worked on the dressing. Using the food processor we used chicken stock, garlic, basil and fresh parmesan cheese. Then we streamed in the EVOO while processing. At first it didn’t look like there would be enough to coat all the chicken, but there definitely was.

Next we sliced up the onions and tomatoes. Since we were doubling the recipe, we had 8 plum tomatoes ready, but we only ended up using about 5 of them. It just seemed like plenty. Remember to get the seeds out of the tomatoes. The seeds can make things too runny/watery. The onion that we had was large, so I only used about half of it.

We got good reviews all around and we had some leftovers. Be warned though the basil and garlic from the leftovers are pungent. The next day when we opened the refrigerator we would be over taken by the smell. I recommend keeping the leftovers in a sealed container (we just had them covered with saran wrap).

This past weekend I made this recipe again so that Brian and I can have another option for lunch this week. It’s a really easy recipe, and I plan on making it regularly on Sundays so we can eat it throughout the week. Another tip is to get the rotisserie chicken the day before using it. Since it’s cold, it’s much easier to work with.