Make Plain Chicken Salad 10x Better, Add This Italian Sauce

Chicken salad can be considerably bland. Without colorful seasonings blends, texture-enhancing veggies like celery, or divisive additions like raisins, it even looks plain. Made primarily of white chicken and equally pale mayo, the combination is just not the most visually stimulating or packed with punchy flavor. So adding a bit of pesto in the mix brings valuable flavor and visual appeal to an otherwise ordinary chicken salad.

Pesto preparations can vary, but it is basically the verdant combination of basil, olive oil, garlic, pine nuts, and parmesan cheese. And every one of those elements is compatible with chicken salad, giving it a bright, salty, nutty bite. But keep in mind that if you already make, say, a particularly garlicky chicken salad, you may want to withhold a few cloves if you're planning to introduce pesto for the first time. Because pesto is also rougher, but still similar enough in consistency as a chicken salad's standard mayo, you'll want to make sure that they neither compete with one another nor overwhelm the bird. Adjusting their proportions accordingly will keep you in tasty territory.

You can bring a pesto punch to any basic chicken salad you prefer, provided you accommodate for the extra ingredient. Basic is the operative base here. You wouldn't necessarily want to add a bunch of pesto to something like our triple anise chicken salad, for example, as it would become entirely too busy. A more plain chicken salad with scant seasonings and mayonnaise is perfect in this case, provided, again, that you pull back on that fat.

If your regular chicken salad recipe calls for ¾ of a cup of mayonnaise per pound of protein, for example, reduce that by half. Fill it back out with a ¼ cup of homemade or store-bought pesto. Stir the mayo and pesto together so it forms one new, fully combined dressing before you fold it in with your cubed or shredded chicken. Don't just pile the pesto on top of the salad and hope for the best, as you will end up with inconsistent bites of the Italian sauce otherwise. These adjusted proportions will also keep you from creating a gloopy mess. If you want more of its bright, fresh flavor, you can always slather a bit of pesto onto bread slices and build an even greener chicken salad sandwich. And, in the unlikely event you end up with any left over, pesto mayo is just as much of a game changer for potato salad.