Danielle Alvarez shares her favourite chicken sandwich recipe of all time

Name: Danielle Alvarez shares her favourite chicken sandwich recipe of all time
Cook time: 30 min
Yield: 12 sliders
Cuisine: Modern Australian
Ingredients: 12 slider buns; 24 leaves of little gem lettuce

Danielle Alvarez

January 10, 2025

Tarragon and black-pepper chicken salad sliders.William Meppem

easyTime:< 30 minsMakes:12 sliders

This is my favourite chicken sandwich filling of all time. The chicken and vegetables are ground up really fine in a food processor before being combined with a mixture of cream cheese and mayonnaise spiked with tarragon and lots of black pepper to make it creamy and thick like a paste. It’s perfect for spreading on bread or for scooping onto corn chips.

To make things easy, I pull the cooked meat from a rotisserie chicken so you don’t even need to turn on the oven (see notes, below, if you’d prefer to roast your own).

Ingredients

12 slider buns
24 leaves of little gem lettuce

FOR THE CHICKEN SALAD

300g cooked chicken breast*
2 celery stalks, thinly sliced
2 spring onions, light-green and white parts, thinly sliced
125g cream cheese
125g mayonnaise
1 tbsp chopped tarragon*
¼ tsp garlic powder
¾ tsp salt
1½ tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 tsp Dijon mustard

Method

Step 1
Place the cooked chicken breast in a food processor and pulse until finely chopped. Remove and scoop into a mixing bowl.
Step 2
Put the celery and spring onions into the same food processor and pulse until also finely chopped. Add to the bowl with the chicken.
Step 3
Place the remaining ingredients into the food processor and blend until smooth. Tumble this mixture over the chicken salad and mix well to combine. (This can be made in advance and kept refrigerated.)
Step 4
Cut open the buns and place a heaped tablespoon full of the chicken salad on each. Add 2 lettuce leaves (torn in half to fit the bun if needed), top with the bun lids, then serve.

Notes: You can pull the meat from a rotisserie chicken, reserving the legs, or buy two skin-on, bone-in chicken breasts and season with salt and black pepper. Roast in an oven at 160C fan-forced (180C conventional) until the internal temperature is 70C (about 45 minutes). Remove from the oven and allow to cool. Discard the skin and bones or reserve to make stock.

*Can’t find fresh tarragon? Swap for fresh dill or skip it altogether.

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