Reclaiming Chinese Chicken Salad

with crisp veggies, poached chicken, and chili oil tahini dressing!

Have You Eaten Yet? Here’s a new recipe from my kitchen to yours that I hope you’ll love! For more recipes, you can pre-order my next cookbook, Chinese Enough, or purchase Mooncakes and Milk Bread for all things Chinese Baking!

For as far back as I can remember, I’ve had this irrational fear… more like a feeling of distress when I would see “Chinese or Asian Chicken Salad” on a menu, which was often because I grew up in the Cleveland suburbs surrounded by chain restaurants. Being Chinese, this salad felt so unrelatable and foreign to me, and actually ordering it would feel too painfully ironic. From the canned Mandarin oranges, to the fried noodles and sweet ginger dressing. It felt obvious that this Chinese chicken salad was clearly not meant for me. I’ll be honest and say that good versions of this salad do in fact taste good, I just wish it was called something else. If it was called Crunchy Citrus Chicken Salad with Ginger Dressing maybe I would have felt comfortable ordering it at my hometown TGI Fridays.

I learned that the classic Chinese Chicken Salad we know today was actually created by a Chinese woman, Sylvia Cheng Wu, at her famous Hollywood restaurant Madame Wu’s Garden. Like many Chinese American immigrants who decided to work in the food industry, her restaurant catered her menu to her customers’ taste, which included a lot of movie stars and I guess Cary Grant gave her some recipe pointers for the chicken salad. Learning about the origins of the salad changed me perspective a little and I would be so curious to try the salad she served in the 60s and compare it to how the salad as evolved or maybe even devolved over the decades. Madame Wu creating non-traditional Chinese recipes is no different than me or any other recipe developer out there that’s cooking food that bridges cultures and helps them explore their own identities.

Will I start ordering Chinese Chicken Salads when I go out to dinner? Ehhhh, hard to say… but when I’m in need of a refreshing and hearty meal at home, I’ll keep turning to my version of Chinese-ish Chicken Salad. This version is fairly different than the classic Madame Wu-style salad. It is actually more similar to Bang Bang Ji Si, which a Sichuan-style chicken salad where poached chicken is tossed in an aromatic blend of chili oil, black vinegar, and Sichuan peppercorns. My version features a colorful medley of crisp radishes and snap peas and you toss them with the chicken in a chili oil and tahini dressing. It’s creamy, spicy, bright, crisp, and super satisfying.

I also love utilizing it as a recipe that uses up whatever is left in your fridge. Instead of radishes and snap peas, you can swap them for cucumbers, kohlrabi, celery, green beans, peppers, or any other snappy vegetable. If your veggies are not as crisp as you would like them to be, just soak them in some ice water to bring them back to life. Leftover rotisserie chicken would be amazing in the mix too, if you don’t want to poach your own chicken. I like to serve the salad with a side of rice or noodles (soba in the case of when these photos were taken), and it would be so delicious folded up in a green onion pancake!

Hot Tip For Getting Curly Green Onions!

There are so many ways to cut and slice a green onion. When I’m feeling fancy, I opt to top my food with a tangle of curly green onions. To do this, you want to cut your green onions into 4” pieces and then thinly shred them with a sharp knife to create delicate wisps. Place them in a bowl with ice water and let them soak for about 20 minutes. This will hydrate the green onions, making them extra crunchy and forcing them to curl!

Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes | our garden is absolutely bursting with tomatoes at the moment, specifically cherry tomatoes and we can’t keep up. I made my first batch of tomato confit over the weekend and proceeded to use most of it to make my favorite tomato, sardine, and olive pasta. So I’ll be confit-ing, pickling, and straight up snacking on tomatoes this week (and all summer).

Cheung Fun and Egg Pancake | just something I dreamed about the other night and now I can’t stop thinking about it and need to make it later today.

Cincinnati Chili | one of my best friends from college and her husband stayed with us over the weekend and it made me nostalgic for “the good old days” and Skyline chili (not that I wasn’t just in Cincinnati in May). I have 2 cans of Skyline Chili left, but I’m feeling inspired to make my own homemade Cincinnati Chili this week.

Shrimp and Cilantro Crystal Dumplings | It’s been a while since I’ve made crystal dumplings and my cilantro in the garden has gone to flower, which is totally okay with me because the flowers are so pretty and I just want to top the dumplings with them.

Black Sesame and Blueberry Cupcakes | BS+B is one of the best flavor combos, like a fancy PB+J. I’m bringing these to a friend’s birthday over the weekend!

Hope you have a great week!!!

Chinese-ish Chicken Salad

Serves 4