How Matthew McConaughey Makes Chicken Salad

Have you ever considered adding apples to your tuna salad? Perhaps a handful of jalapeño-flavored potato chips or some fresh corn? I’m guessing not many people opted for these add-ins until this past November, when Matthew McConaughey’s strange — and strangely delicious — recipe for tuna salad went viral.

But we’re not here to talk tuna. Instead it’s time to put poultry in the spotlight, because Matthew McConaughey shared how he makes chicken salad in a recent interview with Food & Wine. The Academy Award-winning actor noted that although tuna remains his absolute favorite, he’ll also make “chicken salad all the time,” and he spilled a few tips on how to make a great one.

Use a whole chicken

For this creamy dish, McConaughey isn’t a fan of just baking breasts or cooking smaller pieces of poultry. Instead he recommends roasting the bird whole, noting that “I'm not a kebab guy. I don't like pieces of chicken being cooked. I think… if you can cook a whole chicken… That's much better than cooking just a breast or cooking, just a wing or cooking just a chicken piece on the grill. It gets too dry the other way.”

He’s right, it’s much easier to overcook chicken and dry it out when you’re starting with a smaller piece. As an added bonus, if you’re short on time, you can simply grab a rotisserie chicken from your local supermarket, and voilà, you’re ready to make some McConaughey-inspired chicken salad.

Pull the chicken, don’t chop it

Once you have your whole-roasted chicken, don’t cut the meat off the carcass and just chop it up. McConaughey’s preference is always to pull the poultry instead. “You pull it off the bone. That's my favorite chicken salad when it's pulled off the bone, not chopped,” he said.

There are two main advantages to this: Chicken that’s been chopped into cubes won’t stay in place as well when on a sandwich or cracker, whereas shredded chicken salad will be much easier to manipulate when adding it to a delivery vessel. A shredded texture also allows the dressing to cling to more of the chicken, and thinner pieces of meat mean that flavor permeates more of each bite. 

If you haven’t shredded chicken before, it’s incredibly easy, and there are some tricks to make it even easier. My preferred method is to put the chicken in a bowl — after cutting it off the bones — and then use two forks to shred it. But many chefs recommend using a stand mixer or hand mixer to shred the meat in seconds.

Start with the same base as his tuna salad

Just like in his tuna salad recipe, McConaughey recommends a three-ingredient base for his chicken salad: mayo, olive oil, and Italian dressing. The easiest option would be to purchase bottled Italian dressing, but making your own would be even better.

The exact seasonings in Italian dressings will vary depending on the recipe or brand, but most versions have dried oregano, dried parsley, garlic or garlic powder, and, of course, salt and pepper. Most importantly, this style of salad dressing typically includes red wine vinegar, which provides a welcome tanginess to break up the rich, fattier flavor of mayonnaise. 

Use whatever you have

While speaking with the Texas-based star, he explains that his wife Camilla Alves’s family has a weekly tradition that's essentially a zero-waste approach to meals. “On Sunday night at the end of the week, you don't order anything. You don't have a planned dinner. You open up the fridge and everything that's still obviously good, that's in the fridge, that's leftover, you get them all out. and you start to say. Well, what kind of meal can we make out of this?”

This was the inspiration behind his tuna salad, and in turn chicken salad as well. Even his tuna salad recipe that quickly spread across the internet doesn’t stay the same every week, although he notes that the famous recipe is his best rendition yet. But McConaughey says he’ll add everything from pears to hearts of palm into his mayo-based salads — if it’s in the fridge, he’s going to use it up.