The Secret to Ina Garten's Chicken Salad Is This Flavor-Packed Herb
Chicken salad just got the Ina Garten treatment — you know, wildly elevated in a way that is so simple to do — and we couldn’t be more excited. Lunchtime just got exciting again, thanks to this fabulous new recipe. And her secret? One flavor-packed herb that’ll make your mouth water.
“I’m going to do chicken salad sandwiches with a secret ingredient: tarragon from my garden,” the Barefoot Contessa reveals in a video demonstration for her Tarragon Chicken Salad on Food Network’s YouTube Channel.
“It’s a really good herb,” Garten says. According to The Spruce Eats, the leafy green herb has a “subtle licorice flavor” and is perfect for adding a fresh spring taste to recipes. Yes, please!
To make it, Garten starts by roasting chicken breast in the oven. She chops celery to add “a nice flavor” and “a nice crunch” to the chicken salad. With that, she adds the chicken cut from the bone and other ingredients to a bowl and mixes it all together.
“Simple ingredients, but delicious chicken salad,” she explains. Our favorite kind! After that, she adds her secret ingredient, chopped finely, and the chicken salad is done! She assembles sandwiches with the chicken salad, but you could also serve with crackers.
People were practically salivating in the comments section. “Stop, I’m so hungry for one of these now,” one person wrote. “Looks delicious,” another person commented.
“Tarragon ❤️. Great add to poultry (and a pinch of marjoram),” someone else suggested.
When it comes to chicken recipes, using tarragon is one of Garten’s more milder secrets. In February, she shared a recipe for the “easiest dinner.” It involved baked chicken: that is slightly underbaked!
“Take the chicken out when its internal temperature reaches 155 to 160 degrees, and let it rest under a sheet of aluminum foil for 10 minutes,” she explained. “It will keep cooking to 165 degrees, at which point it will still be hot and fully cooked.” It makes us more than a little nervous to try that one at home!
If you are willing to brave the tarragon, though, this chicken salad recipe is also easy (with no underbaked chicken required!).
Get Garten’s full Tarragon Chicken Salad recipe online HERE.
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