Lemon Pepper Chicken Salad Sandwich

I have to admit after I took these photos I couldn’t help but think how obnoxius but excellent my sandwich looks. It was also pretty tasty.

The beauty of being a recent grad is a new job, figuring out adulthood and running “errands” on Saturday; at least in my mind I think it’s pretty glorious. However, another thing I’ve been working on is finding ways to be more frugal and money savvy (for savings purposes and paying down those student loans). Since moving to D.C. I’ve been pretty awful about taking lunch to work. It’s typically been I forgot my lunch, didn’t wake up with enough time to make lunch or I’d rather go out to eat. But I’ve decided with my foodie prowess there’s really no excuse. That and I calculated how much I spend on going out to eat every month and found it was a decently obnoxious amount. In my defense, the mac and cheese at Devon and Blakely’s is amazing and worth the $7.15 bowl I have sometimes had for lunch five days in a row. Judge me not.

But to kick off this sandwich enriched financial house cleaning, I made this lemon pepper chicken salad sandwich. And it was good. Really, really good.

My biggest pet peeve with (insert meat) salad sandwiches was the amount of mayonnaise used. I can eat mayo but given a preference I usually choose not to. Even with the varieties out in stores nowadays I just can’t get into it. It’s like these establishments drown the items in mayo. No one seems to understand what it means to have “just a little mayo.” Thankfully, instead of mayo I used Greek yogurt and it was amazing. I could actually taste what was in the salad beyond the faux-mayo. What a difference moderation can make.

For this recipe instead of the traditional cranberry bits and walnuts I opted to use some pecan chips and cilantro. For my bread, I’m all about rye but I’m decently positive this sandwich is amazing regardless of bread choice.

I love lemon pepper chicken so this was also something of a no-brainer for me as I had the core items on hand.

LEMON PEPPER CHICKEN SALAD SANDWICH
YIELDS: 2 sandwiches
3 chicken breasts
2 tablespoons Greek yogurt
1 half of a lemon (to taste)
2 tablespoons black pepper
Cilantro (chopped)
2 tablespoons pecan chips
1 teaspoon minced garlic
Garlic salt (to taste)
Olive oil
Rye bread
Kale (optional)
DIRECTIONS:
1. Cook chicken breasts according to how you typically cook your chicken. I made my chicken breasts at 400 degrees and seasoned with garlic salt, black pepper for 35 minutes.
2. Set warm chicken in bowl and drizzle olive oil over them.
3. Add in chopped cilantro, minced garlic, Greek yogurt and pecan chips.
4. Stir together while shredding the chicken pieces until well mixed together.
5. Squeeze lemon half into mixture along with desired amounts of black pepper if you’d like more.
6. Spoon mixture onto bread slices along with other desired items (I used kale).