Chicken salad is one of those things that divides people and families like the Hatfield's and McCoy's. Lite mayo or heavy mayo. Bare bones or jacked up with grapes, nuts, and other sissy ingredients. After many, many years monkeying around with my recipe, I finally landed on a preparation that I felt separated me from the pack. How many times have you run across a smoked chicken salad?
There are a lot of different ways to approach chicken salad. On this particular day, I chose to work with a 7.5 lb Purdue bird (because it was on sale). In the past, I've made my chicken salad with just breasts, or just thighs, or a combination of both. My only suggestion would be to make sure you have roughly a 1:1 ratio of dark meat to white meat. So, on this day I split the breast and cut out the spine and that's what you see in the picture. I had previously prepared my smoker (the Bubba Keg on this day) and had it dialed in at 220 degrees with a mixture of Kingsford charcoal and soaked apple wood chips.
After loading the halved chicken on the smoker, I made a stiff vodka and tonic and began to work on my remaining ingredients. For this smoked chicken salad, you will need the following:
1 halved lemon, 2 tablespoons minced parsley, 2 tablespoons minced chives, garlic powder, salt, pepper, 8 oz. mayonnaise ....and that's it. For the two to three or hours that it will take to smoke the bird, I would budget for at least 2 to 3 cocktails or beers (your choice).
After you are completely buzzed or after a couple/few hours have passed, your chicken bits should look a little something like this and they should smell like a little bit of awesome. After letting the chicken cool, peel the skin off and get the chicken down to a manageable size. If you've decided to work with a whole yardbird, then you will need to break the bird down into breasts, drumsticks, and thighs. If you are working with pre-cut portions then you are ready to rock. Pull the meat off the bones and divide the white meat from the dark meat. 
Here's what the mise-en-place looks like. Feel free to make your own additions and subtractions. In the past I have tried adding things like toasted pecans, minced bacon, preserved lemons. They were nice additions but I always seem to come back to this simplistic preparation. If you decide to give this recipe a try, feel free to go crazy. My only caution would be to make this base salad first and taste it before throwing in your other bits. Smoked chicken has a pretty distinct and dominant flavor.
So, this is what you didn't see coming. The trusty meat grinder. What? Yes. I fixed up the old Kitchen Aid with the grinder attachment (small die) and prepared to make some magic. If you don't have a Kitchen Aid with the necessary attachments, you can try and make do with a food processor.
The only thing that you are going to process through your meat grinder or food processor is the dark meat. You'll want to reserve the white meat for later.
When all is said and done, you should have a pile of ground, smoked dark meat and a pile of chopped white meat. Now you will begin to mix in your mise-en-place. The only tool you will need for this is a sturdy spoon or your hand.
Here you see my white and dark meat, chives, parsley, salt, pepper, mayo, garlic powder, and lemon juice ready to begin mixing. I typically work in the center of the bowl and pull from both sides to keep things in balance. For the mayo, I usually go a few (2 or 3) oz. at a time so I can closely monitor my consistency. I don't want this to get soggy. I also add salt and garlic powder lightly as I go, tasting along the way. This is a high wire act, and you need to make sure that things are not getting out of balance. If it gets too salty, no amount of mayo is going to bring it back to where it needs to be. Take your time and taste as you go. This is very important to remember.
When it's all over, you should have something that looks like this picture. This chicken salad is not gloppy and dripping with mayo. The texture should be firm. The taste should be smoky, above all else. The lemon should give you a bright, sparkling note. The garlic powder should give a hint of bite. The herbs should let you know they are there. But the star is the smoke. Don't let the mayo or the salt overpower the mix (and believe me it is easy to do). The great part is that, even though you have a full cup of mayo in the mix, it will feel like a light and firm chicken salad. The mayo tends to bond with the ground dark meat to form a sort of meat-mayo. I promise this will taste like no other chicken salad you have ever had in your life.
You can serve your smoked chicken salad any way you wish. White bread works fantastically. For this occasion, I decided to use Michael Ruhlman's pate-a-choux recipe from his book Ratio to make some parmesan gougeres. The combination of smoked chicken salad and the light, cheesy gougeres were nothing short of stunning. If you have not heard of Ruhlman or his writing, I urge you to pick up Ratio. It is the best non-cookbook cookbook you will ever read. If you spend as much time in the kitchen as I do, this book has the potential to change the way you cook forever, as well as the way you approach your kitchen. Be warned. It is powerful, life-changing stuff.
