Chinese Shredded Chicken Cucumber Salad is a very refreshing side dish or appetizer and perfect for the summer.  At my house, we make it almost every time we have left over chicken.  You get to use up the left over chicken and eat a yummy dish!

By the way – Chinese Shredded Chicken and Cucumber Salad (or in Chinese, 涼拌黃瓜雞絲) is actually a classic Chinese dish.

This recipe below is how my mom normally makes it. We usually eat it family style along with a lot of other dishes, with a bowl of rice.

How to make shredded chicken?

As mentioned we usually like to make this when we already have shredded chicken (bunch of things you can make with leftover chicken, btw!), but sometimes we do not and you can make the shredded chicken from scratch also. If you want to make some from scratch here’s how:

Cooking the chicken

First you want to cook the chicken – you can do this several different ways. For example, you can cook it on the pan fry it, boil it/poach it, or use a slow cooker or instant pot. The most delicious and easy way in my opinion is to pan fry it so that’s the instructions I’m providing.

You can also use either chicken breast or chicken thighs. I prefer chicken breast for this recipe.

Heat up cooking oil in pan. Once hot, add chicken to pan. Sprinkle some salt, and then let it cook for about 4 minutes, and then flip it and cook another 4-5 minutes (or until internal temperature is 165˚F.)

Shredding the chicken

Place cooked chicken breast on a plate or cutting board. Using two forks (one in each hand), separate the chicken meat by shredding in opposite directions. Do this until everything is shredded.

How much chicken to shred?

This really depends on the size of the chicken breast or thigh you are using. Generally speaking, if the chicken breast is about 8 oz, then it should yield about 2 cups of shredded chicken – which is the perfect amount of shredded chicken we need.

If you have smaller chicken breast though, for example, 4 oz ones, then you may need to use 2 chicken breasts for this recipe.

How to make Chinese Shredded Chicken Cucumber Salad

First gather your ingredients:

• 2 cups cooked shredded chicken breast
• 2 medium cucumbers
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 3 tsp of sesame oil
• 2 tsp rice vinegar
• 1 tsp sugar
• Salt, to taste
• 2 scallions aka green onions, chopped (optional)

If you haven’t already, shred the chicken breast. If you need instructions on how to cook and shred the chicken because you do not have leftover cooked chicken laying around – see the notes section.

Next, we are going to cut the cucumbers. There’s two different ways we do this. Sometimes we slice the cucumbers horizontally, and then vertically until it’s long strands of cucumbers (like julienned). However, today we are going to cut it in to in to 1 inch length strips.

In a mixing bowl, combine well cucumbers with 1 tsp of salt.  Wait 10 minutes afterwards.  The cucumber will produce liquid, and dump out the salty liquid.

In a bowl, mix up all ingredients well – chicken, cucumber, garlic, sesame oil, rice vinegar, salt, sugar and green onions.

If the dish is not cool because you used chicken that was hot, you can place in the fridge for 10 minutes or so to get it the right temperature.  Otherwise, go ahead and enjoy!

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By the way – if you love this chicken cucumber salad, you may also want to check out this classic Chinese cucumber salad recipe, it’s so refreshing and such a hit!

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