Supreme Chicken Salads - Cooks Illustrated

Published July 1, 1997.

Roasted chicken breasts and hand-shredding deliver a superb salad.

The Problem

When making this classic version from scratch, and not from leftover meat, how should we cook the chicken?

The Goal

A chicken salad in which the chicken itself actually tastes good--not bland or waterlogged.

The Solution

To perfect the chicken that would go into our salad, we tried wet cooking methods, including poaching and steaming, roasting in foil (which is similar to steaming), and, in a method new to us, dropping the chicken into simmering aromatic water and then removing the pot from the heat and letting the chicken and water cool to room temperature. Unfortunately, all four methods produced a bland, unmistakably boiled flavor. Chicken cooked in a microwave also had that wet-cooked taste. True roast chicken was another matter. Even after the flavorful skin and bones were removed, the meat tasted roasted, and the resulting chicken salad was superb.

list of recipes

America’s Test Kitchen is a 2,500-square-foot kitchen located just outside of Boston. It is the home of Cook’s Country and Cook’s Illustrated magazines and is the workday destination for more than three dozen test cooks, editors, and cookware specialists. Our mission is to test recipes until we understand how and why they work and arrive at the best version. We also test kitchen equipment and supermarket ingredients in search of brands that offer the best value and performance. You can watch us work by tuning in to America’s Test Kitchen (www.americastestkitchen.com) on public television.