Saturday, March 20, 2010

ORZO CHICKEN SALAD

Ingredients
1 supermarket rotisserie chicken
2 cups uncooked orzo pasta
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup chopped red onion
2 green onions, chopped
2 cups grapes, halved
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 cloves minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon ground mustard powder
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.  Add orzo and cook for 5-6 minutes or until just tender.  Drain and rinse with cool water.  Remove meat from rotisserie chicken and shred into bite size pieces.  Add to a large bowl along with the orzo.  Stir in chopped bell pepper, celery, red onion, green onion, and grapes.  In a small bowl, stir together sour cream, mayonnaise, lemon juice, garlic, basil, onion powder, ground mustard powder, salt and pepper.  Pour sour cream/mayonnaise mixture over pasta and chicken mixture and mix well.  Chill for at least 2 hours before serving.

Let's Dish
This is like a cross between a chicken salad and a pasta salad.  It makes a lot, so if you aren't feeding a crowd, you may want to half the recipe.  You can always use the rest of your chicken for soup.  You can also make this with a few cooked and cubed chicken breast halves, but buying the supermarket chicken makes it a lot easier, and I like the flavor it adds.  This is a pretty forgiving recipe, so don't worry if your measurements aren't exact. It definitely tastes better after it has chilled for several hours.  I like it best the next day.

Who Dished It Up First
I've seen several different recipes for chicken salad that include orzo, but I originally got the idea here, at Evil Shenanigans.  This is my own version.

Printable recipe Pin It Now!

8 comments:

Sharon said...

Looks great, funny that not even an hour ago I was searching the net for a leftover rotisserie chicken recipe and now I found it! Thanks!!

detroiteats said...

The salad looks great. Everything is cut to the right size.

just a girl said...

I had printed this out to use later and just made it tonight. It's delicious -- I especially like the kick at the end.

But, man, I didn't read the bit about halving the recipe and I stupidly didn't think how much it would make. There's SO much for lil' ol me!

Do you think I could freeze some of it successfully? (Obviously new to this whole cooking thing.)

Danelle said...

I don't know that this would freeze well, but hey, if it was going to be wasted, why not give it a try?

just a girl said...

Good point. Thanks!

just a girl said...

Thanks for responding so quickly, by the way! I love your blog and have many recipes printed; I can't wait to try another soon.

Laura H. said...

I love this recipe, I've made it countless times now and always get rave reviews!

Brooke said...

I would really like to pin this but it wont let me use your image for it, I went to your pinterest board and the link you have for this (so I could repin) doesn't have a link attached to it! I want to pin this so I can find it again, why not allow images to be pinned?