After spending 36 hours at this beautiful Airbnb in the Poconos with some of my closest friends, it was time to finally face the task we were all dreading: Emptying out the fridge.
We spent most of our weekend relaxing in this beautiful home, which also meant spending time cooking meals to eat. While I didn’t cook for everyone that weekend (love having some time off), we did find ourselves with a whole lot of leftovers by Sunday afternoon. Since our Airbnb required us to empty the fridge before we left, we spent the last hour piling the table with containers and divvying up leftovers. I ended up going home with most of it—I mean, are you even surprised? I’m not the biggest fan of food waste.
I packed up my reusable bag with taco meat, apples, white wine, romaine lettuce, and an entire roasted chicken. How we ended up with an uneaten roasted chicken bewilders me. However, I wasn’t going to complain! There’s so much you can do with leftover rotisserie chicken, and I was determined to use it up for my lunch meal prep the following week. I settled on making chicken salad lettuce wraps.
While I added quite a few fixings to my recipe, to be honest, chicken salad only needs two ingredients: chicken and mayonnaise. I know some people like to sub in Greek yogurt for their chicken salad, but I’m not on a diet, so I don’t mind the extra grams of fat. Plus, it’s yummy.
The extra fixings in the chicken salad are just a bonus, but I felt like having them, so I threw in a few traditional ones: grapes for sweetness, celery and almonds for some crunch.
This chicken salad is also a great way to use up the leaves on your celery. They add a unique flavor to this chicken salad. Plus, you’ll get a little ego boost knowing you wasted even less food.
Chicken salad is great on bread or even on top of a bed of greens. But since I had the romaine, lettuce wraps seemed like the natural fit for lunches.
Something to note about lettuce wraps: Don’t put the chicken salad on the lettuce before packing it—the lettuce will just get soggy. Separate the two when you pack and assemble them during lunchtime.
Needless to say, using up these leftovers was a huge success. It even got me excited enough to join TikTok…
Chicken Salad Lettuce Wraps
Ingredients
- 2 cups cooked chicken shredded
- 1/2 cup mayonnaise
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp pepper
- 1/2 cup grapes halved
- 3 celery stalks (with leaves) diced
- 1/4 cup sliced almonds
- Romaine lettuce leaves
Instructions
- Add the chicken to a large bowl. Mix the chicken with grapes, diced celery, and almonds.
- Scoop in the mayonnaise and mix until the mayonnaise is fully combined.
- Sprinkle in the salt and pepper.
- Scoop the chicken salad into romaine leaves to make lettuce wraps.
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