Ham Salad Recipe Pioneer Woman

Ham Salad is a delicious appetizer or sandwich filling (perfect for holiday leftovers!) made with diced ham, relish, celery, and mayonnaise in 5 minutes.

Salads are some of the most versatile dishes you can make, since they can be paired with almost any main dish. If you liked my recipes for Chicken Salad, Tuna Salad and Egg Salad, you need to add this Ham Salad to your recipe box too!

HAM SALAD

My Ham Salad recipe is perfect as everything from an appetizer to a main dish, and is made with diced ham, mayonnaise, celery and relish. You can make it in around 5 minutes, and it stays good in the fridge for a few days so you can bring it with you to work for a quick lunch.

You can eat it the traditional way with a fork or, if you want a unique party food you can serve it over crackers. My personal favorite way to eat it is with Texas Toast as a sandwich! The extra thick bread makes this sandwich a guilty pleasure.

I love making new recipes with my leftover holiday ham! – if you have leftover holiday ham, use it for breakfast! I love making Ham Steaks or Eggs Benedict for after holiday breakfasts!

Check out this sandwich:

Ham Salad Sandwich on plate This is one of my favorite recipes because of how quick and easy it is to make and because you can use leftovers to make it. The best Ham Salad is made from your leftover holiday ham from Christmas, Easter, or Thanksgiving, but you can also use deli meat or the thick honey baked ham slices you can get at the grocery store. As long as you dice it up, any ham will work.

To make Ham Salad, take your slices of ham, leftover of otherwise, and put them into a food processor. You need to only use the food processor in pulses so that you don't end up with meat paste. You want the pieces to look like large crumbs about the size of bacon bits or large peppercorns.

Then mince your celery into small chunks and pour them, the ham, mayonnaise and sweet relish into a large bowl. Stir everything together and cover the bowl, then put it in the fridge for at least an hour. You can definitely refrigerate them for longer, but definitely don't take it out early if you want the proper chilled taste.

DELICIOUS EASY DELI SALADS:

HOW TO MAKE HAM SALAD

Add ham to a food processor and pulse until it is in small pieces but not a paste, more like crumbs.
Add all the ingredients together in a large bowl and stir well.
Refrigerate for at least one hour and serve chilled.

Ham Salad ingredients in white bowl

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VARIATIONS ON HAM SALAD

Sauces: You don't just have to use sweet pickle relish. You can use dijon mustard, yellow mustard, or even dill pickle juice. Depending on what your personal tastes are, you can add more or less mayonnaise to make the flavor stronger or weaker.
Add ins: Try finely chopping some green onions, bell peppers, or white button mushrooms and stirring them in. You can also top the Ham Salad with shredded cheddar or a handful of parmesan cheese.

How to Store Ham Salad:

Serve:Ham Salad is traditionally served up chilled and it has mayonnaise in it, so you really shouldn't leave it out for longer than about 2 hours or it will go bad.
Store:You can keep the salad for up to about 3 days in the fridge, as long as it's kept in something airtight. It will keep better if you store the components separately, especially the mayonnaise.
Freeze:Don't. Ham Salad should be eaten fresh or out of the fridge, since mayonnaise famously doesn't freeze well.

MORE DELICIOUS HAM RECIPES:

Ham Salad Appetizer in bowl

▢ 3 cups ham (16 ounces)
▢ 1 cup mayonnaise
▢ 1/2 cup celery , minced
▢ 2 tablespoons sweet relish
▢ 1/8 teaspoon coarse ground black pepper

Add ham to a food processor and pulse until it is in small pieces but not a paste, more like crumbs.
Add all the ingredients together in a large bowl and stir well.
Serve chilled.

Ham Salad collage

Sabrina is a professionally trained Private Chef of over 10 years with ServSafe Manager certification in food safety. She creates all the recipes here on Dinner, then Dessert, fueled in no small part by her love for bacon.

Sabrina Snyder is a professionally trained personal and private chef of over 10 years who is the creator and developer of all the recipes on Dinner, then Dessert.

She is also the author of the upcoming cookbook: Dinner, then Dessert – Satisfying Meals Using Only 3, 5 or 7 Ingredients which is being published by Harper Collins.

She started Dinner, then Dessert as a business in her office as a lunch service for her coworkers who admired her lunches before going to culinary school and becoming a full time personal chef and private chef.

As a personal chef Sabrina would cook for families one day a week and cook their entire week of dinners. All grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning was done along with instructions on reheating. As a private chef she cooked for private parties and cooked in family homes in the evenings for families on a nightly basis after working as a personal chef during the day.

Sabrina has been certified as a ServSafe Manager since 2007 and was a longstanding member of the USPCA Personal Chef Association including being on the board of the Washington DC Chapter of Chefs in the US Personal Chef Association when they won Chapter of the year.

As a member of the community of food website creators Sabrina Snyder has spoken at many conferences regarding her experiences as a food writer including the Indulge Food Conference, Everything Food Conference, Haven Food Conference and IACP Annual Food Professionals Conference.

Sabrina lives with her family in sunny California.

See more posts by Sabrina

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