I love a great chicken salad, and this is so good with a sparkling crisp, wonderful Sauvignon Blanc.

The first thing we're gonna do is chop up a few ingredients.

So, I have some fresh chives here.

You can use fresh green onions if you like, but I really like chives in this.

I think the flavor distribution of chives is a little bit easier on the palette than the onion.

You get that chunk of onion, but with chives, it's all the way through it.

So, I'm gonna take a nice bowl here, and I have my chives, and I also have a few other things that I'm gonna put in here that I've already chopped, including 10 to 12 slices of bacon that I've crisped and then just chopped up.

I have one 10 ounce package of corn, and I love to use this variegated color because it really adds a lot to the recipe.

So, just one 10 ounce package of frozen corn, or you can use about two cobs of fresh corn, cooked or uncooked.

And then I have four chicken breasts that I've grilled, and I love it when it's grilled.

I also love to do this salad with a rotisserie chicken.

It's just wonderful.

So, anytime you have leftover roasted chicken, it's just delicious.

Now, the last thing I wanna put in here are some avocados.

Now, let's look at these avocados.

When you buy an avocado, you want it to have just a hint of give to it.

You don't want your fingers to smoosh in, and then, if you've got this little stem on the end, just pull that off, and you can see then if it's green or if it's brown.

If it's brown, likely your avocado will be brown, as well.

So, let's just run a knife right around the edge.

It's a nice, tough skin on that one.

And we're just going to remove the meat from two avocados and then chop those up.

(jazzy music) So, I've got all of my great ingredients here in my bowl, and I'm just gonna toss this around a little bit.

I like to toss it before I put the dressing on so the dressing, when it lands, doesn't just absorb in one thing, and now we're gonna make some delicious dressing.

Now, what I like with this dressing is that it's great on salad.

It's great on this chicken salad.

So, I always make a little bit extra because, sometimes, I like to make this in a sandwich, and sometimes I like to make it in a salad.

So the first thing I'm gonna do is cut my lemons in half and juice those really well.

For this recipe, it takes it's about two lemons, but for today, because I wanna serve this as a salad, I'm gonna use three lemons.

So, just nicely softened so you can juice them right up.

Remember with lemons, just like with limes, if they're too hard, stick those things in the microwave.

So, what I'm gonna do now is just pour this into a little dish so that I can make my dressing.

You want equal parts juice and olive oil.

So if you're using two lemons, that's about four to five tablespoons of juice if they're nice, juicy lemons, so four to five tablespoons of olive oil.

So, we're going to take our juice, pour in some olive oil, equal parts ish.

Then, I wanna take a little salt, about a teaspoon.

It's three pinches for me.

And a little pepper.

And the flavor is actually going to come from the dill that I put in it.

And I love a good fresh dill in this.

This dressing is also really great with fresh basil or fresh thyme.

So I have some really nice fresh dill here from the garden.

And you can use dry dill.

I like to use about a tablespoon of fresh dill, but if you have only dry dill, about a teaspoon, so, you don't wanna overpower.

And remember, anytime you use dried ingredients, dried herbs, when it says fresh, you're gonna use about one third the amount.

And then, give that a good whisk.

You just want to get that lemon juice and olive oil incorporated.

Mm.

Nice, nice, nice.

Now, I wanna put about, oh, quarter to a half cup on here, and then I'm gonna save the rest to put on my salads as I make them.

Mm.

Wow, delicious.

(jazzy music) There we go.

Now, the wonderful thing about this, you can take this to a picnic.

You can use it as hors d'oeuvres on crostini.

Just make sure that you chop up all your ingredients really finely.

Now, I wanna take some chicken salad and just put on some salad greens.

And you can see here that I have a couple of slices of red bell pepper.

If I'm doing this in a sandwich, I like to add the red bell pepper to give it that little pop from being in the bread.

So, you want that little bit of red, or, of course you can always slice tomato, but if I'm doing it as a salad, I like to just kind of make that a little topper.

Now, let's give it a taste.

Love this.

Oh, this is so good.

Now let's talk about our wine.

This is a crisp Sauvignon Blanc.

A Sauvignon Blanc is a white grape.

You can see that right here in the glass.

It's grown in moderate and cool climates as well as warm climates.

Here in Virginia, we have more of a moderate climate.

So, when you taste this, you're probably gonna taste a lot of citrus, a little grapefruit, a little bit of lemon.

It's just wonderful.

And it's fantastic with dill.

So, I always use Sauvignon Blanc with dill when I'm gonna serve these together.

If I'm gonna do basil, this salad is wonderful with a Chardonnay.

So, this one in particular is crisp.

It's wonderful.

If it were grown in a warmer climate, it may have a little more flavor of a peach or an apricot because that warm climate just gives a little different flavor.

So, let's see how it is with the chicken salad.

Oh, perfect.

Great summer meal.

Wonderful, again, for holidays.

So, I hope you'll enjoy this delicious avocado chicken salad with dill dressing and some great Sauvignon Blanc.

(jazzy music)