Name: Chicken in the Straw Salad
Prep time: 10 min
Yield: Serves 6
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 1 (1 lb) bag coleslaw mix; 2 sweet mini peppers, finely chopped; 1 cup frozen peas; 1/4 cup green onions, finely chopped; 3 cups cooked chicken, shredded or chopped; 1 small can potato sticks; 1/2 cup mayonnaise; 3/4 cup buttermilk; 3 tablespoons ranch dressing mix; 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder; 1 tablespoon fresh dill, chopped; Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

May I please introduce you to my new favorite chicken salad? Here’s Chicken in the Straw Salad. While normally I love to spread chicken salad on a sandwich, I find myself snacking on this one with crackers, some veggies, or just with a fork. It’s kind of a cross between a chicken salad and a slaw so it’s the kind of thing you can make a meal out of. And the crunch from that “straw” is so good that it’s almost too easy to keep coming back for more! And don’t even get me started on that dressing…

What Ingredients Do You Need for Chicken in the Straw Salad?

It’s not a long list and you don’t have much chopping to do! You’ll need:

A bag of coleslaw to make things quick and easy.
Two mini sweet peppers.
Some frozen or canned peas.
Green onion.
Cooked chicken. (A great use for leftovers!)
A can of potato sticks! So crunchy.
Mayo and buttermilk.
Ranch dressing mix, garlic powder, and some fresh dill.

How do You Make Chicken in the Straw Salad?

There’s really not much to it here, you’re basically just mixing some ingredients together so no special techniques needed. One thing I love about this salad is that it starts with a bag of coleslaw mix, so you don’t have to prep much at all. You only need to chop up the peppers and the green onion and shred that chicken.

Get out a big bowl, and then whisk together the dressing first. You can do this right in the serving bowl or do it separately and pour it over at the end. The dressing is just some mayo, buttermilk, ranch dressing mix, some garlic powder, fresh dill, and some salt and pepper. If you don’t have fresh dill on hand, you can definitely use dried, about a teaspoon will work.

Then, add in the coleslaw, the sweet peppers, the peas, the green onion, and the chicken and mix it all together. You want to chill this for at least an hour to get the flavors to really meld, and well, it just tastes best cold. That means you don’t want to add those potato sticks yet or they’ll lose their crunch.

Add those right before you serve and you’ll get a nice potato-chip style crunch to go along with your chicken salad meets coleslaw.

Because this isn’t quite chicken salad and it’s not quite regular green salad either, it makes a great lunch all on its own. It’s the best of both worlds!