Chicken cucumber salad recipe

The introduction

So, now I’m going to tell you about one of my favourite chicken salad recipes, that not only me, but I guess, whole my family loves and that’s to be honest, not very good, because when everyone loves one dish in the house, there’s nothing left from it very soon. So, you have to have many of it, but that’s not very easy, so there are whole lot of problems there.

This salad is very popular in Georgia, I can say. Well, not in Georgia as a whole, but the big supermarkets and those cafes and stuff, where you can buy pre-prepared food, such as salads, cakes, main dishes and all the other stuff, have this salad and you can get them there almost anywhere. And the point is, this is not a salad that has many calories in it, it’s just this mayonnaise that you may think is not good for your diet, but trust me, there’s not so much mayonnaise in that amount of salad that you will eat during one meal, that can kill your diet. And the chicken breast and cucumbers are pretty good for your diet, so, eat this salad, because it’s really delicious and low in calories!

I can say, that it’s been a long time since I last prepared this dish and I wanted to prepare it for a long time, too. But there were many things going on and we’ve had many other dishes prepared from time to time and these new potatoes were sold everywhere and we just made some dishes from them and, well, there was not time or requirement for this chicken and cucumber salad to be present at our tables, because that would be much and it’s not really necessary to have so many dishes at home that you can’t even eat. And I hate the thing when you have all those dishes and stuff like that and you can’t really eat them all and there’s nobody to eat them with you and they just get bitter, because there’s nothing you can do. I mean, can you tell someone that you have a dish that is getting old and you can’t eat it all and you need help?! I don’t think so. They would think you’re crazy or you want to get rid of that dish or something like that and I think that is pretty bad to do.

Buying chicken breasts

But, now I had this chance to prepare this dish, because there was this gap when there wouldn’t be any major dishes left and I could just have this salad for myself and that would be it! So, I bought this large chicken breast and was pretty satisfied with my purchase, because I knew, when I got home, I would have some great chicken and cucumber salad for myself and it would be gorgeous! Well, there’s this small thing on my street _ there’s a cabin nearby my building and there they have this raw stuff, such as chickens, chicken breasts, chicken livers and hearts and other things. They have eggs and cornflour, too, and I really like buying some stuff there. Mainly I buy some livers and chicken breasts there. And by “raw” I mean that those products are not frozen and it’s better, I guess. Because it’s not frozen and you don’t have to unfroze them or something. And, besides, I know they always have new products, because they sell a lot and the distributors come to them every day and stuff like that. So it’s really good to buy products there and not in some grocery stores, for example, where the products are frozen and who knows where they were produced and they have these chickens from Brazil or Turkey, I guess, while these raw products that I buy are Georgian _ today I was looking at the sign on that cabin and saw something that I guess belongs to this Georgian company called “Koda” and that is a pretty popular company, which sells eggs, chicken and all those chicken stuff.

So, I bought two chicken breasts, I mean, whole two of them. And they were really big, so that each of them cost something like over 5 Laris, and well, it was 13 Laris in all. And for the amount of chicken and cucumber salad that I would get from them, this number is pretty good. And you may wonder, why I bought two chicken breasts, but not one, and I’ll tell you, that I wanted an extra one, so that I would put it in my refrigerator’s freezer and freeze it and then whenever I wanted to make another salad from chicken breasts, I would unfreeze it and use it, rather than buying another one or a frozen one. And besides, I wouldn’t have to go to the grocery store for that. So, I cut that extra chicken breast into two halves _ just like the breasts are, and wrapped each one of them into plastic wraps and put them in the freezer.

Now, if you look carefully, there are only three main ingredients to this dish. They include chicken breasts, cucumbers and mayonnaise. Of course, the main thing here is the chicken breasts. And, well, you can use other vegetables instead of the cucumber if you want, but this particular recipe includes the cucumbers, so you should use cucumbers. And, besides, I’ve written in my another blog a recipe for chicken breasts made with carrots, which is a really delicious one, too, so, you may want to read it and prepare it, too and you can find it in my blogs about Georgia.

Chop chop

The preparation process itself doesn’t involve any special equipment or special ingredients or something like that. And it really doesn’t need much time considering the ingredients and that you just have to chop them or slice them. And if you have this chopper, where you can put all those ingredients and just chop them, that is the best thing you could have! So that it would be so much easier to prepare this dish and you will just love preparing it because of that chopper or blender or whatsoever. I’m saying this, because I have something like that and it’s called a “Blender” and it actually does more of a chopping, than blending, so I don’t really know why it’s called a blender, but, what can I do?! So, all I’m saying is, that this thing really helps in almost everything and it helps me a lot! I mean, if I didn’t have this blender, I would probably not prepare this dish so often, because it involves dividing these chicken fillets into small pieces and people usually do it by hand and it’s pretty exhausting when you have to prepare this dish for many people, and with the help of this blender, you can just divide those things into smaller pieces with just by one click on its button. So, now you get it, huh? That’s pretty amazing, and cool, and efficient. That’s why I love it. Everything is made to simplify our lives and we should really appreciate that. Life should become even more simpler, if you ask me, so that we can have more time with our friends or family or for our hobbies, for example!

So, about this recipe, I know I have a huge introduction until I write about the recipe, but things just come up and I just want to share with you. But, hey, you can just scroll down and read the recipe, that’s that simple. I really do want you to read the whole blog, though.

I’ve already told you, that the recipe doesn’t require many things and it’s pretty easy to prepare and not very time-consuming, so, I think, you will want to try this dish! Okay, here we go.

Ingredients:

• Chicken breast (or two chicken fillets)
• Cucumbers, 2
• Mayonnaise (or sour-cream), 350 ml
• Fresh coriander, 30 grams
• Fresh parsley, 10 grams
• Salt to taste
• Thyme to taste
• Ground coriander to taste

Preparation process

So, the main thing here is to cook the chicken breasts. The ones that I bought were pretty large, and they had this bone between them _ you know, just the way it naturally is. So I cracked them into halves and put them into a boiling water. That way they would cook better and in less time. And, just so you know, if you cut them into smaller parts, they will need much less time for cooking than the large ones _ that’s an elementary physics, you know. So, considering that the cut breasts were still pretty large, when the water boiled again (after I put the breasts in a boiling water) I waited something like 40 minutes for them to get cooked, because I wanted them to be easier to be split into pieces. And I wanted them to be cooked well. And that’s how it really needs to be done to be ready _ it needs something between 30 minutes and one hour after the water boils. When the chicken breasts are done cooking, you can take them out and let them cool, so that they will be warm or something when you need to split them by hand or by that machine I’ve told you about.

Now, while the breasts are being cooked, you can take your time and prepare other ingredients. Well, technically, you only need to chop and slice them. You need to chop the herbs, which are parsley and coriander, and you need to slice the cucumbers into thin slices. And all those things can be done by that chopper, too, so everything’s just very easy!

I usually slice the cucumbers into very thin slices and then I cut those slices into halves. But you can do it however you want, it won’t do any harm. I mean, you can have the whole slices, or thicker ones, or just some chopped cucumbers, whatsoever! As long as you have cucumbers in your salad, it’s okay.

Now you have everything ready and you just have to mix all the ingredients up!

So, in a large bowl I put the split chicken breasts and added the cucumbers and herbs to them. Then I seasoned it with some salt, added some spices and I mixed them together well. Then I added some mayonnaise and that was the last stroke _ I mixed them alland that was pretty much it! I know that’s really easy!

Mayonnaise vs sour-cream

I just want to tell you, that you can use sour-cream instead of the mayonnaise, especially if you want to lose weight and are on a diet _ changing mayonnaise into sour-cream helps a lot, I think. The taste changes a little bit, of course, but it’s still delicious and healthy and everything. So, don’t you hesitate to do that, as I’ve tasted the dish that way, too, and it’s good.

Sometimes people just don’t eat mayonnaise and they are in an awkward situation when there’s this dish on the table and they can’t eat it, and, maybe, there’s nothing else to eat or I don’t know, so, if you know someone, who can’t eat mayonnaise or something like that, you can prepare this dish with sour-cream and they will be pleased and you won’t feel bad about it, too. That’s a pretty good idea, if you ask me. And, of course, you know, that sour-cream is better than the mayonnaise, because mayonnaise have sugars in it and it’s not very healthy to eat mayonnaise all the time or so.

My salad

To be honest, I did need more time preparing this dish, because of some reasons. My blender that I told you about was useless at that moment and I had to do those stuff by myself, and as I’ve told you, it took some more time than the usual. What happened was that it got stuck and couldn’t move the knife. Well, it could move it when there was not a great pressure on the knife, but that was not a big help, so I just decided that I could prepare those stuff by hand. That wasn’t a great idea, considering that I had plenty of other things to do, such as study for my lectures or write some tasks, but I still did that. And it took some time, but the result was great, so I won’t whine about it.

Well, I can say, that my chicken and cucumber salad came out pretty delicious and good. I really enjoyed eating it and, I think, everyone did, too. This is a light salad, it’s not dry, it’s not stock, it’s a salad with a great taste and ingredients which areuseful for our health.

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