Grilled Chicken Salad Sandwich

The chicken salad isn't anything special but grilling it takes it to the next level. There's something here that makes any grilled sandwich 1,000% better. I've got another tip for grilled sandwiches that I don't think you're ready for yet, so we're gonna start with this and bring out the pro tip next time.

To make one sandwich, you'll need bread, carrot, onion, chicken, mayo, salt, pepper, and garlic pepper. I prefer sourdough bread if at all possible. The chicken salad can be made with whatever you've got laying around, which is why I used carrot and onion. If you have a recipe you like, by all means use that. Sometimes I like to get crazy with some grapes and walnuts. I'm using leftover rotisserie chicken here, you could use canned in a pinch. Whatever spices you find are good too. I found a jar of celery salt after I took this pic, and it worked really well in there.

Here's the sandwich tip: Grill the inside of your bread as well as the outside. You get crisp on the outside, crisp in the middle. You get better structural integrity for your sandwich, which means less chance of it all falling into your lap. So to start off, pick whatever side is going to be the inside (and there is a correct answer, but that's for another day) and grill over medium heat until toasty. 

Look at how delicious the inside of that sandwich is! Once you have it crisped to your liking, remove from the heat and prepare your filling.

This is just diced carrot, onion, and chicken with mayo, celery salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Mix to your desired consistency. 

Get the bottom slice in the pan, crisped side up. Load on your chicken salad, then top with the other slice, crisped side down.

Cook until crispy again, then flip and crisp the other side. This is right after the flip. A little darker than is ideal, but still really good.

When done, cut in half on the bias and take it out onto the back porch to take a picture. Be careful not to drop it on the dog begging at your feet.

Notes:

• The basic thing I want to get across with this post is to grill both sides of your bread when making a sandwich. This may be common sense to some people and earth shattering to others. Before I heard about this, I was an outside-only guy. They were okay. Doing both sides makes it way better. Try it with a plain grilled cheese to see for yourself. Extra credit if you do one on both sides and one outside only and have a taste test.
• This works great with tuna salad and cheese for a fantastic tuna melt.
• As I said above, I have another Super Sandwich Secret that I plan to tip in the future. I actually have a sandwich series planned for a couple months from now. Stay tuned and hope I don't get bored and stop doing this.
• Sourdough bread is the superior sandwich bread. Fight me.