The Mayo That Doesn't Betray You (and Two Chicken Salads Built On It)
House Mayo
Both recipes below lean on this. Make it once a week and stop buying jars.
Makes about 1¼ cups · Active: 5 min · Total: 5 min
1 pasture-raised egg, at room temperature
1 pasture-raised egg yolk
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 tsp Dijon mustard (check that it's wheat-free)
1 cup cold-pressed avocado oil
½ tsp fine Baja Gold sea salt
Method. Put the whole egg, yolk, lemon, mustard, and salt in a narrow jar just wide enough for an immersion blender. Pour the oil on top and let it settle for 30 seconds. Sink the blender to the bottom, run it without moving for 15 seconds until the base turns pale and thick, then lift slowly to pull the rest of the oil down. Ten seconds more. Done.
If it breaks: start a fresh yolk in a clean jar and drizzle the broken batch into it while blending. It comes back.
Keeps 7 days refrigerated.
Green Machine Chicken Salad
The one worth copying exactly. Kale and cucumber and chicken bound in mayo sounds like it shouldn't work until you eat it, and then you understand that the cucumber is the whole trick: it keeps a heavy salad from sitting on you.
Serves 4–6 · Active: 25 min · Total: 1 hr 15 min · Year-round (kale is sweetest in North America from fall through spring, and cucumbers peak in summer) · Best eaten: midday
For the chicken
1½ lb pasture-raised chicken breast
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp Baja Gold sea salt
For the salad
3 cups lacinato kale, stems stripped, sliced into thin ribbons
2 cups Persian cucumber, quartered lengthwise and sliced
1 cup celery, small dice
¾ cup House Mayo
½ cup flat-leaf parsley, chopped
⅓ cup green onion, thinly sliced
¼ cup cilantro, chopped
1 jalapeño, seeded and minced
2 garlic cloves, grated on a microplane
3 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 tsp Baja Gold sea salt
½ tsp black pepper
Method. Rub the chicken with oil and salt and roast at 400°F for 20–24 minutes, until it reads 160°F at the thickest point. Rest 10 minutes, then cut into ½-inch dice while still warm. Warm chicken drinks dressing; cold chicken repels it.
Massage the kale ribbons with the lemon juice and a pinch of salt for a full minute, until they darken and slacken. This is not optional. Unmassaged kale in a bound salad stays rude.
Fold everything together, taste, and let it sit 30 minutes before serving so the jalapeño can travel.
Variations. Swap half the mayo for raw-milk crème fraîche and it goes lighter and more sour. Add ½ cup toasted pumpkin seeds for texture.
Pairs Well With. Sliced summer tomatoes or cold watermelon in high summer, when you want the sweet-cold contrast. My Spiced Beet Slaw once the nights turn.
Nourishment Notes. Kale delivers sulforaphane precursors and vitamin K1, but the fat here is what makes that K1 useful. Fat-soluble vitamins need a ride. The whole-egg mayo carries choline and the cholesterol your brain is built from, and the pastured chicken brings complete protein without the seed oil load that commercial chicken salad hides in plain sight. Eat this at midday, when your digestive fire is highest and protein clears best.
Roast Chicken Salad with Crispy Skin
Four ingredients doing honest work. The deli version is fine. This version has a spine, because I brine the bird and I pull it warm.
Serves 4 · Active: 20 min · Total: 1 hr 30 min, plus an overnight dry brine · Year-round · Best eaten: midday
1 whole pasture-raised chicken, 3½–4 lb
2 tbsp Baja Gold sea salt (for the dry brine)
1 tbsp ghee or tallow
1 cup celery, small dice
½ cup green onion, thinly sliced
⅔ cup House Mayo
1 tbsp Dijon or yellow mustard
1 tsp Baja Gold sea salt
¾ tsp coarse black pepper
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
Method. Salt the chicken all over, inside and out, and leave it uncovered on a rack in the refrigerator overnight. The skin dries, the meat seasons through, and you get crackling instead of rubber.
Rub with ghee and roast at 425°F for 55–70 minutes, until the thigh reads 175°F. Rest 20 minutes. Pull the meat by hand while it's still warm enough to be slightly uncomfortable, tearing along the grain into shreds rather than cubes. Chop the skin fine and put it back in. That's the part the deli throws away, and it's the best part.
Fold in everything else. Taste twice: once hot, once after an hour cold, because salt reads differently at each temperature.
Variations. Add ½ cup halved red grapes and ⅓ cup toasted walnuts for the classic. Fold in 2 tbsp of the pan drippings for something richer and more spreadable.
Nourishment Notes. Roasting the whole bird gets you the carcass, and the carcass gets you broth, and broth gets you the glycine that many in ancestral nutrition believe helps balance all the methionine in muscle meat. That nose-to-tail balance is a big part of what ancestral eating means. The skin carries the fat-soluble vitamins the deli discards. Save the bones for Broths 101.
Storage
House Mayo keeps 7 days refrigerated. Both chicken salads keep up to 3 days refrigerated, in a covered glass container.
For your cycle: Both salads are rich in protein, choline, and B vitamins, for steady energy in every phase. The Green Machine's leafy greens and herbs make it especially fresh in the follicular and ovulatory phases, and the roast chicken salad is comforting and grounding in the luteal phase.
Sourcing
Eggs — organic and pasture-raised, as fresh as possible, ideally from a local farm
Avocado oil — cold-pressed, extra virgin, and third-party tested for purity, in dark glass (much of the avocado oil sold in the U.S. has been found to be rancid or mixed with other oils)
Dijon mustard — organic and wheat-free, with no preservatives; Delouis Fils or Maison Orphée
Chicken — pasture-raised whole birds and breasts, from a local farm or White Oak Pastures
Kale, cucumbers, celery, herbs, jalapeños, garlic, green onions, and lemons — organic, from a farmers' market
Ghee or tallow — grass-fed ghee, or tallow rendered from grass-fed suet
Crème fraîche (optional) — raw from a farmer you know and trust, or organic and grass-fed
Grapes, walnuts, and pumpkin seeds (optional) — organic
Extra virgin olive oil — organic, single-estate, harvest-dated, in dark glass
Salt — Baja Gold sea salt
— Anna aka Food Marshall