Chicken Salad With Avocado, Corn, and Miso Dressing Recipe
Mix up your classic chicken salad with this summery variation made with sweet corn, avocado, and the juiciest poached chicken tossed with a light and creamy miso dressing.
Cooking the chicken sous-vide allows you to cook it to a lower temperature than traditional methods, guaranteeing moister meat while maintaining food safety standards.
Adding aromatics to the sous-vide bags packs the chicken with flavor before you even begin to dress it.
Sous-vide chicken comes out so tender and juicy that it almost reminds me of fatty sashimi-grade tuna on your tongue. With that as inspiration, I started with the flavors of a Japanese nuta, a simple dish of tuna with a creamy dressing made with miso and mirin. I tried messing around with yuzu juice and Japanese-style Kewpie mayo but found both flavors to be a little overwhelming. Instead I opted for a pinch of hot Japanese mustard and shichimi togarashi (a Japanese seven spice blend made primarily with chili, black sesame seeds, nori, and dried orange peel) along with plain old lemon juice.
For the actual chicken, I stuck with the method I'd developed for my classic chicken salad, bagging bone-in skin-on chicken breasts with some aromatics (in this case scallions and ginger) and cooking it at 150°F for one hour to yield meat that is firm yet incredibly tender and juicy.
Ingredients:
- 1 3/4 pounds whole bone-in, skin-on split chicken breast halves (2 to 3 breast halves)
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 4 whole scallions, 2 roughly chopped, 2 thinly sliced
- 1-inch knob ginger, thinly sliced
- 1 tablespoon white or 2 teaspoons yellow miso paste
- 1 tablespoon juice from 1 lemon
- 2 teaspoons mirin
- 1/2 teaspoon dried mustard, preferably Japanese
- 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 small clove garlic, minced (about 1/2 teaspoon)
- 1/2 teaspoon shichimi togarashi, plus more for garnish
- 3/4 cup fresh corn kernels cut rom 1 to 2 ears sweet corn
- 1 avocado cut into 1/4- to 1/2-inch dice