A Leaner, Tastier Chicken Salad

I've always been proud of my chicken-pickin' skills. I can strip a chicken carcass clean quickly and efficiently, and strip every last bit of unrendered fat from between the thigh muscles along the way. The result is a very clean mound of chicken meat, ready for use in dishes that call for cooked chicken.

Or so I thought.

Turns out there is still a ton of greasy fat sticking to everything in sight. No wonder my chicken salad recipes were always greasy on the tongue, no matter how little binder I used.

So I got an idea that turned out to be a big hit: bathe the picked chicken in boiling water, stir for 30 seconds to agitate gently, and drain.

The result was perfectly lean chicken that was rejuvenated by the hot water and stripped of every spec of fat, plus a bonus of about a quart of fatty yellow chicken broth. I could have separated the fat and used the defatted broth, but I decided to leave everything as it was and feed it to Argie The Demon Kitty, who appears to be needing a little boost in the "stick to your ribs" department.

Once you drain the washed chicken, spread it out in a single layer on your cutting board to cool for about three minutes, then chop and cool in your freezer for about ten minutes. You'll have perfectly defatted chicken that's cold enough for direct use in any cold recipe you like.

Here's what I did. I did away with the mayonnaise entirely and used yogurt instead to bind the chicken salad. Much less fattening. Then I added other tangy ingredients like minced pepperoncini and minced capers, plus the usual complement of onion, relish, red bell pepper, and celery. And this time I added parsley, minced cucumber, and minced grape tomatoes to give everything a decidedly Greek influence.

Everyone loved it! What a great use of Sunday night's MegaChicken leftovers. And the great part was what the boiling water did to the drier parts like the leg meat that tends to dry into leather after roasting and a couple of days in the fridge. It came out plump and juicy and tender.

PS-- Make sure to bathe the pieces before they are chopped. You'll end up with a handful of stringy meat paste otherwise.

KBO!