What To Serve With Chicken Salad: Top Amazing Options

This post is dedicated to presenting you with different types of food that can be served with chicken salad. Chicken salad can refer to any kind of salad that makes use of chicken (boiled or roasted, or any leftover chicken) as the main ingredient.

Since chicken salad is a versatile dish, it’s very easy to pair it with other types of food and dishes. This will depend on the overall flavor of your chicken salad recipe. If it’s sweet, spicy, or sour – it’s best to pair your chicken salad with something that has a different (but complementing) taste.

Read on as I present you with main course meals, side dishes, and drinks that you can serve with chicken salad.

11 Food to Serve with Chicken Salad

#1 – Bread

You can serve bread with chicken salad instead of serving chicken salad sandwich. You have a lot of choices in bread when serving it with chicken salad. Here are just some of your options:

• White bread
• Wheat bread
• Banana bread
• Garlic bread
• Baguette

#2 – Rice

Wild rice and brown rice can be served with chicken salad.

#3 – Green Salad

Raw, fresh green salad with light dressing like vinaigrette would pair well for a mayonnaise-based chicken salad. Try to avoid pairing 2 dishes with the same base (such as a mayo-based chicken salad and mayo-based green salad) as the taste will be redundant and unappealing.

#4 – Coleslaw

Coleslaw with main ingredients like cabbage, carrots, and onions will work well as side dish for chicken salad. A mayo or cream-based coleslaw will complement a spicy curry chicken salad as their flavors are not the same.

#5 – Lettuce, Tomatoes, Cucumber

If you’re making a chicken salad sandwich, adding lettuce leaves, slices of tomatoes and cucumber will make the dish more exciting. These add-ons are particularly matched with mayo-based chicken salad as their flavors will further enhance the taste of the recipe.

#6 – Buttered Vegetables

Since chicken is basically a meat dish, serving it with a side dish of vegetables is always a good idea. You can do this trick with any of your favorite greens such as:

• Green beans
• Broccoli
• Asparagus
• Corn and carrots

#7 – Bacon

Bacon goes well with anything (almost anything) – even chicken. Bacon is particularly complementing with chicken salad, especially if it’s mayonnaise-based. The bacon can be served as a side dish to the chicken salad or as an add-on (bacon bits work well as add-ons). The bacon’s salty taste will allow you to further enjoy the mixtures of flavors in your chicken salad recipe.

#8 – Platter of Fruits

A hearty dish of chicken salad would be more satisfying if it’s served with a platter of fruits (sliced). Fruits are refreshing, light, and filling – so, the entire experience will be even more wonderful. You also have a lot of options when serving fruits. Fruits in season are always good, and some of our all-time favorite fruits include the following:

• Apples
• Oranges
• Avocados
• Watermelons
• Strawberries
• Grapes

#9 – Platter of Vegetables

If a platter of fruits is a suitable side dish for chicken salad, so is a platter of vegetables. Unless you’re a vegetable hater, you know that certain vegetables are actually good and are enjoyable to eat raw.

For this technique, it would be good to choose those types of vegetables that are crunchy and firm in texture – for presentation and satisfaction as well. These veggies are particularly great with ranch dressing:

• Carrots
• Celery
• Asparagus

#10 – Cheese

The salty, flavorful taste of cheese makes it a great side dish for chicken salad. In fact, you can even include cubes of cheese in a chicken salad recipe. As side dish, cheese can be served in the following form:

• Plain sliced cheese
• Baked cheese sticks 
• Fried cheese balls

#11 – Drinks

Any type of drink will go well with chicken salad, but I would suggest avoiding soda and soft drinks for health reasons (they’re high in sugar and calories). These are better options:

How to Serve Chicken Salad

Like I said, chicken salad is a versatile dish – and it can be served in a lot of ways. Listed below are just some of the ways to present it.

Top 3 Chicken Salad Recipes

Below, I listed 3 of the best Chicken salad menu ideas that you can try at home.

Top 1 – Basic Chicken Salad

Here’s a very simple chicken salad recipe that you can prepare in minutes. The basic ingredients to this particular recipe are as follows:

• Chicken (chopped)
• Almonds (chopped)
• Celery (chopped)
• Mayonnaise (for the dressing).

You will get a basic chicken salad when you combine all the ingredients together. Try it – it’s easy to prepare and really delicious.

​Top 2 – Curry Chi​cken Salad

If you’re always making chicken salad using mayonnaise as dressing, you might want to change the flavor a bit by adding curry to the mixture. For this particular recipe, you need the following ingredients:

• Chicken (chopped)
• Celery (chopped)
• Mayonnaise (yes, it’s still mayo-based)
• Honey
• Curry powder

To make the dressing, combine the mayonnaise, honey, and curry powder (Amazon) ingredients. You will see that you will end with a yellowish color of dressing instead of white (because of the curry powder). Now, I suggest adding a little bit of curry powder at a time – but you can make the curry flavor as mild or as strong as you want it to be.

​Top 3 – Chicken Salad Sandwich

Chicken salad sandwich is probably one of the most popular chicken salad recipes – that’s why I want to present you with a simple recipe here. To make this particular recipe, the following ingredients are needed:

• Chicken (shredded)
• Mayo (for dressing, can also be substituted with yogurt)
• Fruits (grapes or apples)
• Celery (chopped)
• Seasoning (salt and pepper will do)

When making chicken salad sandwiches, you can use different types of bread (e.g. croissant, white bread, wheat bread, etc.).

What Should You Serve with Chicken Salad?

As you can see, you have a lot of options when thinking about what to serve with chicken salad. It can be served as the main dish or side dish – and it can be served with other types of meat, fruits, and vegetables. So, don’t be hard on yourself – you can serve it with any of your favorite dishes.

For variety, use different types of dressings for your chicken salad. You can also include add-ons like bacon bits, cheese, potatoes, etc. to make the dish more exciting.

If you liked this article, do share it with your friends. I am also excited to hear your thoughts, so leave me a note or something below.