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- From the playground to the lunch table,
egg salad sandwiches have always gotten us by in a pinch
but can we transform this humble sandwich
into something ultimate?
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Fanny Farmer published the first recipe,
that we know of, that was defined by tender white bread,
hard boiled eggs mashed up with mayonnaise,
bread smeared with butter and a piece of lettuce for crunch.
That's cool and all, but what's missing?
Texture.
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I bet you didn't think an egg salad sandwich can be ultimate
but you haven't seen this egg salad sandwich.
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All right, so the egg.
The egg is all about texture.
I pulled inspiration from the flan,
the sweet, tender custard.
We actually removed the sugar from it
and it delivered on that creamy texture
where it doesn't ooze out the side of the sandwich.
You wanna make sure it's well incorporated
and it's no longer ribbony.
Now we're gonna be adding some milk and cream to it.
That's gonna help as a tenderizer,
as well as that fat is gonna add a little bit of richness.
So, the straining is gonna help remove
any chunks of white that are still remaining.
But you can notice that still kind of
has a milky color to it.
That is the air that's still incorporated in there.
So we can set this aside for about 15 minutes or so.
The bubbles are gonna rise to the surface
and we can skim those off.
But in the meantime, we can prepare our pans.
We're gonna be using two loaf pans.
Each of these are gonna create two patties,
so this is gonna make four sandwiches.
I like to give it a little bit of a crinkle.
Makes it a bit easier to work with.
Honestly, this is probably
the least fun part of their recipe,
but it's very, very important though,
'cause you don't wanna make any holes in the foil
because the egg will seep through and be beneath it,
creating a little bit
of a weird un-molding experience later on.
So, this probably looks like a crinkly mess 'cause it is.
What I do to help smooth it out,
a little more cooking spray,
with a dry towel, gonna spread out all those wrinkles.
I like to trim away the excess foil.
Boom, both of our molds are ready,
lined with foil as smooth as we could get it.
Let's divide the custard evenly between both of them.
So, I like to use a scale for this.
It's a lot more consistent instead of eyeballing.
Now, we're gonna cover the top.
This is important because we don't want
to develop a skin during the baking,
'cause you're actually steaming inside there.
All right, so these are ready to go in the oven now.
Typically with custards, you're gonna be baking 'em
in like a bain marie sorts,
inside of another pan with water coming up
to the side of where the custard is.
Usually that's done because people are baking
in a hot oven, like 350 or even 375.
We're gonna be using a lot lower temperature
at around 225 or so.
And so that's gonna give more of an even, consistent baking
without overcooking the eggs.
If you overcook the eggs,
you're gonna start smelling, like,
farts or sulfury compounds in the air.
That's where the egg is gonna have
lots of bubbles inside of it,
as well as it's gonna start to souffle and collapse.
So, low temperature, precision cooking is key.
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(timer rings) Let's check on our eggs
that have been baking in the oven.
That is perfect.
So nice, beautifully smooth layer on the top.
It's fully set in the middle.
That is just what we want.
So what we're gonna do is we're gonna transfer this
to the fridge to chill for at least an hour
and it'll make the process a lot smoother.
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All right, let's portion the eggs.
These have chilled for an hour, nice and firm.
So, to unmold this, just gently lift the edges
to make sure it's not stuck for whatever reason.
So here, don't just immediately rip it open,
this egg is still tender.
So I like to rip the corner.
Feels like it's sticking.
Just grab it with your thumb peel away.
Okay, let's flip it over.
Could you just portion this up right now,
slap it between two pieces of white bread with some mayo
and eat it?
Yes, it would be really good.
But we're going after the ultimate egg salad sandwich,
so we're gonna bread this up.
So, with portioning, the dimensions is key.
Checking it out.
Boom, we're gonna get two nice portions out of this.
So, one key visual to look for is there should be
very, very minimal air bubbles inside your custard.
If you're seeing a lot of air bubbles inside your custards,
that mean you overcooked it.
You're probably gonna be smelling it,
very sulfury, not very good.
All right, the breading.
So, the breading has been inspired by katsu.
Katsu typically breaded and fried pork or chicken.
We're gonna be doing it with the egg patty.
That's what's gonna make it ultimate
and crispy-crunchy on the exterior.
So, that starts with a three stage breading,
flour, egg, and breadcrumbs, panko.
I like to put this on a tray
because when we go to bread later,
it's gonna get a little messy.
All right, we got more egg,
so we're just gonna whisk this until smooth.
Last but not least, the breadcrumbs panko.
Right now the panko is a little too coarse for my liking.
I like to grind it up a little bit
or beat it up with a rolling pin,
'cause that's gonna create more surface area
and more of the breadcrumbs are gonna be able to adhere
to the outside of the egg patty when we go to fry it.
So, let's bread these puppies up.
So we're gonna start with the flour first.
We're gonna be working one at a time.
Be gentle, be gentle.
Tap off any excess flour.
We're gonna go into the egg.
So, let's use one hand for the egg,
one hand for the breadcrumbs,
that way we're not making a gigantic mess.
So, I like to shake it around.
That's gonna get the crumbs on the side of the patty.
Oh, you don't need to rush through this.
Take your time.
Try and work as clean as you can.
All right, here we go.
On the fence if I want to do a double breading,
should we do the double?
Let's do the double.
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That's the daily double.
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All right, time to fry.
We got our frying station all set up,
oil at 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
We got our pre-breaded egg patties.
We got a rack for them to cool on
as they come out of the oil.
We're gonna season 'em up with some KFC spice blend.
Go to ChefsSteps.com for the recipe.
Let's start frying.
So, I recommend frying one at a time.
The spider, I don't actually want to flip these,
it might damage 'em, so I just kind of shake it
and keep it off the bottom of the frying pan.
That's where it'll actually start burning.
So, this will only go for about two to three minutes.
All we're really doing is trying to get the crust
to a golden brown color.
In that short amount of time, it will heat the egg up.
So when deep frying, it's actually important
to pull it just before it reaches the color you want
because it will carry over.
So, that's perfect.
♪ 1, 2, 3, 4 ♪
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- All right, we just fried up our fourth patty.
Dust it with our seasoning.
These are hot, super crispy right now.
We're gonna transfer 'em to a low temp oven to keep warm
until we're ready to assemble shortly.
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I like to use shokupan or milk bread.
It's slightly sweet, it's tender,
you know, has a really tight crumb.
So those are the key characteristics that we're looking for,
that's why we're not just using
any run-of-the-mill white bread like Wonder bread,
which is kind of gummy in my opinion.
It's also baked in a Pullman pan.
so you're gonna get more consistent cuts and shapes
that are really desirable for our egg salad sandwich.
I like starting with a whole loaf like this, too,
because I'm in control of the size of the slices.
If you want our recipe for this tender, amazing milk bread
go to ChefSteps.com.
I like to trim away the crust, I don't need it.
I want this to be a little pillow
when you're holding onto this amazing sandwich.
The key thing,
this is gonna be roughly the dimensions of our custard.
It's about three and a half cross
Once it comes out, we're gonna trim the eggs,
so we're gonna lose a little bit on the edges.
So it's gonna be about three by three inches for the patty.
So let's check our bread with that
'cause we want it in that same ballpark.
Boom, three inches by three inches,
that is just the size we want.
Egg salad sandwiches, they're typically not toasted
but I toast the inside of the sandwich on one side,
that way we're adding more texture
and more flavor from the buttered edge.
I don't toast the exterior because I like to feel the pillow
as a first part of the biting experience.
So we're gonna start with butter.
Do a lot of butter.
So if you have some spots that are a little more blonde,
you can add a little more butter.
Look, that's looking great.
Whoo, all right, that's what we're looking for,
a nice, even, golden brown color.
We're gonna transfer those to a tray toasted side up.
All right, the old reverse toasted bread.
You can leave these out.
You can even put 'em in a low temperature oven to keep warm.
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Any egg salad sandwich that's worth it's salt
has pickles in it.
They're adding texture, a crunch, as well as acidity
to cut through all the richness
of tons of mayo packed in there.
So, instead of just taking any old pickle,
I decided to do a little bit of a riff on it
'cause I'm also used to having egg salad sandwiches
with a little bit of celery seed.
So, to combine both of those,
I decided to do a quick pickle with shallots and celery,
so it's like a relish of sorts.
So we're gonna start off with distilled vinegar.
We're gonna add a little bit of sugar to it.
It's gonna sweeten it up a touch.
All right, little bit of salt.
We're just gonna mix together the vinegar, sugar,
and salt until dissolved.
This recipe is a part
of our egg salad sandwich recipe on ChefSteps.com.
That will continue to dissolve as we slice up our celery.
Good, slice up our shallot.
One thing that's kind of cool
is when I was looking up the original recipe
in the States from Fanny Farmer in her book
she adds onion puree.
In the recipe it says like "Scrape the side of the onion."
I don't know what that means,
so I'm just gonna use shallots.
Last but not least,
I'm gonna add a little bit of whole grain mustard.
Huge fan of mustard, the acidity, the texture, the bite.
If you do make this in advance, like a day or two before,
the color will dull and the flavor will still be great,
the texture will be great, but it won't be as green.
I like to serve it really cold because the contrast
of the warmth of the fried patty is really, really nice.
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So it's time to assemble,
but there's one ingredient you want to cut at the very end
and that is the lettuce.
We're gonna shave it really thin
so that the whole leaf doesn't come out
when you go and bite.
Make sure you cut down to the stem.
This is the crunchiest part of the lettuce.
All right, let's pull our fried patties out of the oven
that's been keeping warm, still nice and crispy.
Toasted side up.
We're gonna start with the mayo.
We're going with Kewpie.
It's gonna be a more umami-packed mayo, a lot more savory.
Now for Dijon, this is gonna give a little bit
of a kick and acidity to the sandwich.
It's gonna help cut through all the richness.
So if you look at the classic egg salad sandwich
from Fanny Farmer,
it's described to have a piece of crisp lettuce on there.
I bet that lettuce is fighting for his dear life
to bring any crispiness to that sandwich.
We're just gonna shave up the lettuce really thin.
That way it's going to eat a little bit better,
where it's not gonna slide out when you bite into it.
Instead of doing mashed up hard boiled eggs with mayo,
we have our beautiful deep fried egg custard.
We go right on top.
Now, we got our pickles with shallots and celery.
This is gonna add some crunch, fresh flavor,
and acidity again to cut through all the richness
from the mayo as well as the egg custard.
All right, here we go.
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All right, the final part, the reveal,
slicing it right in half.
Okay, sweet, check that out.
So, save have about equal parts bread
to the thickness of the custard, counting the breading,
equal parts pickles and lettuce by volume
that were shaved up.
So dude, come try it out this egg sando
Let me know if it's better
than what you remember from growing up.
- The toast on the inside and the chewy bread.
That's super fricking good, too, I like that.
- Which one do you want?
- This one requires more chewing in a good way.
- All right, there you have it.
That's the ultimate egg salad sandwich.
- Mmh, oh my God.
That is crazy good.
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- [Narrator] Gorgeous, gorgeous.
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- [Narrator] Subscribe to our channel
and visit ChefSteps.com for more tips, recipes, guides,
and tools to help you level up in the kitchen.
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