Tired of the same chicken salad recipes? Our Lemon Basil Chicken Salad has bright flavors of lemon zest and fresh basil and tastes so good on cucumber slices or crackers. Our chicken salad recipe is also dairy free, soy free, and egg free.
If you’re looking for allergy friendly recipe ideas for leftover chicken or naturally made rotisserie chicken, our Lemon Basil Chicken Salad is a quick recipe for easy lunches and packs well in lunchboxes for school or work.
My recipe for basil chicken salad is made with soy free and egg free mayo, and it’s also low carb and dairy free. You can keep it low carb by serving it with cucumber slices, or you can serve it with crackers or on allergy friendly bread for sandwiches.
In our photos for this post, we used the cucumbers and the Simple Mills sea salt almond crackers, they are yummy and similar to Wheat Thins!
Our lemon basil chicken salad is:
- Peanut free
- Tree nut free
- Dairy free
- Soy free and egg free (when made with the recommended mayo)
How to make lemon basil chicken salad
For this chicken salad, you can use either leftover cooked chicken, or you can use rotisserie chicken. If you have multiple food allergies, it’s usually a good idea to stick with homemade cooked or grilled chicken since the ingredients in some rotisserie chicken can include things like butter or gluten ingredients.
You’ll chop your cooked chicken into small pieces, however small or large you like. I usually opt for 1/4 to 1/2 inch pieces so the chicken salad can go on a sandwich well.
Zest part of your lemon and then juice it, adding the zest and juice to the bowl with the chicken, add the other ingredients, and stir it up. Super simple!
Variations for our allergy friendly chicken salad
If you like adding chopped celery to your chicken salad you can add some of that, too. I’m personally not much of a fan of celery, so you won’t see it in hardly any of my recipes (I think my stuffing recipe is the only one that uses celery), but you can always add some if you want some veggie crunch!
I think grated or chopped radish or chopped cucumber would taste great in this recipe as well if you want to mix in chopped veggies but don’t like celery either.
This would also make a great made with leftover Thanksgiving or Christmas turkey as well!
Brands of soy free mayo
For this recipe, I used the Hellman’s vegan mayo that is egg free and doesn’t use soybean oil (as of the writing of this post).
Our old favorite used to be the Just Mayo (formerly Hampton Creek mayo), but the production has been so sporadic and I can never find it anymore so I gave up on them and have been using other brands.
We have a bigger list of soy free mayo on our soy free kitchen post, but here are a few of our favorite soy free mayos:
- Hellman’s vegan mayo
- Good & Gather vegan mayo from Target
- Green Garden plant based mayo
- Sir Kensington’s vegan mayo
- Follow Your Heart soy-free veganaise
Check out our other salad recipes:
- Classic Dairy Free Greek Salad
- Warm Garlic Herb Red Potato Salad
- Smoked Salmon Salad
- Thai Cucumber Chicken Salad
We recently re-wrote this recipe and post, and added new photos! The original post was published in March 2014.
Lemon Basil Chicken Salad (Dairy Free)
Ingredients
- 2 cups chopped gluten free leftover grilled or cooked chicken (or natural rotisserie chicken)
- ¼ cup soy free mayo (egg free if necessary as well)
- 2 Tablespoons minced chives
- 1 to 2 Tablespoons minced fresh basil (depending on your preference)
- Zest of ½ lemon
- 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
- ½ teaspoon dijon mustard
- ¼ to ½ teaspoon garlic powder
- ⅛ teaspoon salt
- ⅛ teaspoon black pepper
Instructions
- Chop the chicken into small pieces (1/4 to 1/2 inch pieces depending your preference).
- In a medium bowl, combine the chopped chicken, mayo, chives, basil, lemon zest, lemon juice, dijon mustard, and the seasonings.
- Serve on bread for chicken salad sandwiches, or serve on crackers or cucumber slices.
- Store any leftovers in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days.
Nutrition
Sarah Jane Parker is the founder, recipe creator, and photographer behind The Fit Cookie. She’s a food allergy mom and healthy living blogger based in Wyoming. Sarah is also an ACSM Certified Personal Trainer, ACE Certified Health Coach, Revolution Running certified running coach, and an ACE Certified Fitness Nutrition Specialist
I am not paleo but a lot of the food fits for me! 🙂 YUM!