Vietnamese Chicken Salad recipe | Milk Street: The New Rules cookbook

Vietnamese Chicken Salad with Sweet Lime-Garlic Dressing (Goi Gà), Excerpted from MILK STREET: The New Rules Copyright © 2019 by Christopher Kimball, photographs by Connie Miller of CB Creatives.

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Charred Broccoli with Japanese-Style Toasted Sesame Sauce (Rule No. 9: Beat Bitterness by Charring)
Lentils with Swiss Chard and Pomegranate Molasses (Rule No. 18: Don’t Let Neutral Ingredients Stand Alone)
Bucatini Pasta with Cherry Tomatoes and Fresh Sage (Rule No. 23: Get Bigger Flavour from Supermarket Tomatoes)
Soft-Cooked Eggs with Coconut, Tomatoes, and Spinach (Rule No. 39: Steam, Don’t Boil, Your Eggs)
Pan-Seared Salmon with Red Chili-Walnut Sauce (Rule No. 44: Stick with Single-Sided Searing)
Curry-Coconut Pot Roast (Rule No. 67: Use Less Liquid for More Flavour)

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Vietnamese Chicken Salad with Sweet Lime-Garlic Dressing (Goi Gà)

Start to finish: 15 minutes

Servings: 6

⅓ cup lime juice, plus lime wedges, to serve

3½ tablespoons fish sauce

1½ teaspoons white sugar

2 medium garlic cloves, finely grated

1 small red onion, quartered lengthwise and thinly sliced

3 cups shredded cooked chicken

½ medium head green or red cabbage

(14 ounces), cored and shredded (about 4 cups)

4 medium carrots, peeled and shredded on the large holes of a boxgrater (about 2 cups)

3 medium jalapeño chilies, stemmed, halved lengthwise and thinlysliced

1 cup lightly packed fresh basil, torn

1 cup lightly packed fresh cilantro leaves and tender stems, roughlychopped

1½ cups roasted, salted peanuts, roughly chopped

For this recipe, we turn cooked and cooled chicken into a refreshing salad by way of a bright and flavourful dressing. Fish sauce, known as nuoc mam in Vietnam, gives the dressing savoury, umami-rich underpinnings, while lime juice, sugar and garlic punch up the flavours. The jalapeños add moderate spiciness; if you prefer milder heat, seed the jalapeños before slicing them.

We call for about 3 cups of shredded meat, the yield of a small to average sizebird (3 to 4 pounds). The finished salad can be covered and refrigerated for up to an hour.

Don’t tear the basil too far in advance or it will discolour. When preparing the herbs, leave them on the larger side. Bigger pieces punctuate the salad with colour, flavour and texture. Marinating the sliced onion in the dressing forabout 10 minutes tames its raw bite, so don’t skip this step.

In a small bowl, stir together the lime juice, fish sauce, sugar and garlic,until the sugar dissolves. Add the onion and let stand for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

In a large bowl, toss together the chicken, cabbage,carrots, chilies, basil and cilantro. Pour on the red onion– dressing mixture and toss. Toss in half of the peanuts, then transfer to a serving bowl. Sprinkle with the remaining peanuts and serve with lime wedges on the side.

Excerpted from MILK STREET: The New Rules Copyright © 2019 by Christopher Kimball, photographs by Connie Miller of CB Creatives. Used with permission of Little, Brown and Company, New York. All rights reserved.