What to Serve With Chicken Salad That Is Tastier & Easier to Make At Home?

A mouthwatering chicken salad can be eaten as is because it consists of many flavors. You have the grilled chicken, cherry tomatoes, lettuce, and cheese. To top it off, you can also add carrots, red onions, some sweet-spicy paprika, and salt as seasoning.

Once you understand the base, or basics, of how a chicken salad is made, it’s easier to play around with ingredients that are just as healthy and tasty.

What requires more thinking and evaluating is what to serve with chicken salad. And not what actually goes into a chicken salad! So that’s what I’m here to talk about, in detail, with you today.

No matter what you do, you can’t go wrong with serving up a bowl of chicken salad. And pairing it with something that works as a healthy and hearty meal altogether.

What to Serve With Chicken Salad

While there are endless dishes that complement a chicken salad – sandwiches, fries, eggs, chips, soup, etc. The ingredients in a chicken salad make the perfect guide for you.

So for example, there are a few different ways of making a chicken salad. You can use mayonnaise as salad dressing which is a popular option. But there are also other options such as a cashew-garlic dressing, or vinaigrette.

The ingredients that pair with mayonnaise may not with vinaigrette or cashew and vice versa.

In my personal experience with chicken salad, the nuttiness of cashew pairs beautifully well with potatoes and soup. While mayonnaise goes well with more crunchy greens so a sandwich or a wrap.

Having said that, let’s look at each individual option carefully…

Soups

With a classic chicken salad, served cold, with basic ingredients such as lettuce, red onion, and tomatoes. Soups that are both creamy and rich in a strong flavor are perfect.

A chicken salad, as opposed to a veg caesar salad, is filling on its own. So choosing a veg soup to go with a chicken salad makes all the difference.

Your options are vegetable soup, creamy tomato soup, cold cucumber soup (my personal favorite), avocado soup, pumpkin soup, mushroom soup, and such.

If you’re not adding any strong seasoning to the salad, it pairs well with soups with a hotter flavor profile, something Mexican or Asian perhaps.

Spicing up the plainness of your chicken salad is always a great way to shake things up. Whether you’re eating leftovers or putting together a quick meal, savory and spicy with chicken salad is never a bad idea. Plus the warmth of soup combined with the cold chicken salad feels uniquely delightful.

Bread

Chicken salad pairs well with bread in different ways. You have the basic toasted bread that takes less than a minute to make. Then you have something a little more sumptuous such as bagel bread, croissant, sourdough, garlic bread, dinner rolls, or sandwich loaf bread.

Bread can be chewy, soft, fluffy, crumbly, or all of the above. The perfect toast to serve with a slightly warmed-up chicken salad can be just as delicious and wholesome as a cold chicken salad between bagel bread with roasted potatoes on the side.

Though simple, baked bread adds a powerful flavor. Its unique texture serves as a fascinating yet light match for the creamy, crunchy, and hearty chicken salad.

You can also make a delicious chicken salad sandwich, toasted, with dill pickles at the side of a chilled glass of iced tea. It’s the perfect summer meal put together quickly and effortlessly.

Chips

Add a little less salt to your chicken salad and pair it with chips. The crispy and saltiness of chips will complement the soft yet plain chicken salad. You can bake chips at home or buy a packet of fried/baked chips from the supermarket. It works really well as an appetizer or a main course!

Or for a casual meal, combined with a chip, it’s hard to resist a good bowl of chicken salad and chips. It’s light yet so flavorful!

Dill Pickles

Dill pickles add a unique flavor to the whole vibe of a chicken salad. It’s tangy, slightly spicy, and has got a nice bite to it. Something that pairs well with a cold pasta chicken salad, if you ask me.

But make sure you add a little less salt in the salad because the saltiness of the dill pickles will make up for it. It gives a well-balanced flavor profile. It’s not too strong nor is it too dull to have an entire meal of.

Grilled/Fried Potatoes

You can cook potatoes in a variety of ways, right? French fries, mashed, grilled, roasted, or chips. And when you think of French fries, the mind immediately goes to a good burger or roasted chicken.

But fries with a chicken salad is another favorite of many people. It makes a complete meal. It’s filling, crunchy, savory, and appetizing. I would recommend warming up the chicken salad before serving it with crispy French fries. The ones that are crunchy on the outside and soft from the inside. You definitely won’t regret it.

I also found this fantastic grilled potatoes recipe that goes really well with a chicken salad…

Final Thoughts

A good chicken salad is key to a fantastic and hearty BBQ, picnic, or an easy lunch. This means you get to pair chicken salad with a perfectly prepared dish to balance out the flavors and texture.

Get creative and play around with the above-mentioned foods with a chicken salad. There are plenty of options that you can try out, one at a time, so that you don’t have to eat the same chicken salad dinner more than once. You have foods you can try for every single occasion. And truthfully, they don’t even take a lot of time to make. This means you get to finally eat a hearty chicken salad that doesn’t taste too creamy or chewy or dull.