Many people make huge mistakes when whipping up egg salad. While it's a fairly simple dish
to create, there are some important things to get right. Here, we look at the most common
mistakes people make when they prepare egg salad, and give you tips on how to fix them.
The foundation of a good egg salad is a well cooked hard-boiled egg. According to domestic
wizard Martha Stewart, cooking a hard-boiled egg should be incredibly easy. Just place your eggs
in a deep pot and fill it with water until the eggs are submerged by at least an inch.
Then, bring the pot, quote, "to a boil over high heat, cover,
remove from heat, and let stand 13 minutes."
When the eggs are done, immediately place them in ice cold water to stop the cooking process,
to ensure they'll come out of the shell easily when peeling.
Undercook your eggs by letting them heat for less than 12 minutes and you'll end up with
a yolk that's runny and soft. Let the eggs cook for 6 to 10 minutes and you'll end up with an egg
that's somewhere between soft- and hard-boiled and completely wrong for use in egg salad.
On the flip side, when you overcook your eggs, letting them heat for 14 minutes or longer,
you risk the outside of your eggs turning green and starting to taste of sulfur.
Using the freshest eggs possible can eliminate the problem since fresher eggs have whites that
are less alkaline, and are less likely to undergo chemical reactions during cooking.
When your hard-boiled egg is difficult to remove from the shell, it's not just frustrating — it can
ruin your entire dish. You know the feeling. Sometimes hard-boiled eggs instantly release
from their shells. And sometimes they become a total nightmare — sticking to the shell as you
remove it, tearing off in chunks, and ultimately looking downright terrible once finally peeled.
The secret to helping eggs always peel easily out of their shell after cooking is making
sure you cool them off quickly. Once your eggs have simmered for the recommended 13 minutes,
author and health coach Elizabeth Rider recommends you immediately place them in ice water.
"Shocking them in ice-cold water stops the cooking process, which not only yields more tender whites
and a perfectly cooked yolk, it immediately cools the eggs which makes them easier to peel."
Before you add the cold water, you can also gently shake your cooked
eggs around the pot — or place in a jar — and bang them along its edges,
creating fine cracks. These cracks allow cold water to enter the egg, stopping the
cooking process even faster and making your eggs easier to remove from their shells.
Salt is a key ingredient for any egg-based dish,
including egg salad. Whether you're using Hawaiian red salt or table salt,
that flavor is essential for helping to make eggs taste rich and satisfying.
"They say I have high blood pressure. So I get this low sodium salt special. Fake salt."
However you use it, Fine Cooking said:
"Salt has the amazing ability to intensify agreeable tastes and diminish disagreeable ones."
While chef Gordon Ramsay has warned that adding salt to scrambled eggs at the wrong time can
cause them to, quote, "go gray," you don't have to worry about such a problem with egg salad.
Just make sure you get the salt in there at some point while you're making the salad!
In addition to improving your egg salad's flavor, salt can also help to keep your
concoction from turning too watery by pulling moisture from cooked eggs.
Accidentally slip up and add too much salt to your egg salad? You can make your eggs
palatable again by immediately dicing up some onions or celery and adding them to your eggs.
Sometimes, the addition of a watery ingredient will be enough to make your dish taste
less salty. If that doesn't work, you can also add more eggs to your salad
to help dilute the salt. Or, rinse the salt off your eggs and make your salad again.
You know you should be using freshly ground pepper. GQ jokingly pointed out and said:
"Literally, every recipe ever written calls for [it]."
So why are you still using pre-ground black pepper that comes in a can instead of the real,
chef-approved, freshly ground stuff?
While packaged black pepper may provide a decent amount of heat to egg salad, Simply
Recipes points out that freshly ground black pepper is fruity and bright — and they added:
"Its interplay with different foods and textures is varied and nuanced."
Pre-ground black pepper also loses flavor over time,
oxidizing in its can and losing significant nutritional benefits for your health as
well. You're also better able to control the coarseness of freshly ground black
pepper — extra fine for all-over flavor or big and chunky for a defined flavor punch.
Freshly ground black pepper is also significantly less likely to be filled with contaminants than
packed, processed, ground black pepper. NPR has warned that packaged spices,
including black pepper, often contain dirt, debris, and even rodent hairs.
And if all that weren't enough,
GQ's Paula Forbes' final argument should convince you to make the jump to a pepper mill. She said:
"[Freshly ground black pepper] honestly make[s] your food taste so much better."
The question of whether you should use Miracle Whip or
traditional mayonnaise in foods like egg salad has divided many.
Some prefer the sweet, slightly spicy flavor of Miracle Whip — which
was originally rolled out for the 1933 World's Fair. Others stand by the salty,
slightly tangy taste of a traditional mayonnaise like Hellmann's. Whichever camp you fall into,
know that Miracle Whip isn't actually mayonnaise — and it could impact the texture of your egg salad.
According to Real Simple:
"The U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires that anything labeled 'mayonnaise' contain
a minimum of 65 percent vegetable oil by weight."
Although the exact oil content of Miracle Whip is unknown for proprietary reasons,
it doesn't meet the mayo standard — even though it does contain the standard egg,
soybean oil, vinegar, and water found in traditional mayonnaise.
Don't like the taste of mayo or Miracle Whip? Martha Stewart suggests
swapping an equal amount of ricotta, yogurt,
cottage cheese, hummus, or even mashed avocado into your egg salad in its place.
"It’s egg salad, darling."
"Egg salad! My favorite!"
While most egg salad recipes call for mustard,
if you're only using a bright yellow prepared mustard, like French's,
then you — and your egg salad — are missing out on a world of flavors and possibilities.
Celebrity chef Richard Blais of Top Chef fame said that mustard in any form is one
of his favorite foods because of its ability to add subtle acidity and spice to any dish.
When it comes to using mustard in egg salad, Christine Rooney
of The Rustic Foodie has informed she prefers smooth Dijon. She also said:
"I would avoid the grainy country-style mustard as it will change the texture of the dressing."
Spicy brown mustard and sweet honey Dijon are also great options.
Whole grain mustard is another ideal texture
and flavor-boosting option for egg salads. As the name suggests, this condiment is made of
whole mustard seeds that have been ground just enough to form a thick, coarse paste,
but not so much that they fully break down to be as smooth as prepared mustards.
For the most potent mustard bite, try dried ground mustard in your egg salad.
A staple of the spice aisle, The Spruce Eats said:
"A tablespoon of ground mustard is much hotter than a tablespoon of prepared mustard."
This is because prepared mustard often contains added ingredients
such as vinegar, turmeric, paprika, salt, and garlic.
One of the oldest mass-produced condiments in the U.S., Saveur has reported that H.J. Heinz,
of Heinz ketchup fame, first started packaging and selling "India Relish" in 1889.
The website said:
"The original secret recipe, loosely based on traditional Indian relishes,
featured a sugared and vinegared mix of pickled cucumbers, green tomatoes, cauliflower,
white onions, red bell peppers, celery, and mustard seed, plus cinnamon and allspice."
Today, you'll find a wide range of relishes in most grocery stores – dill,
sweet, spicy, Chicago-style – which is often neon green! – and more,
plus relishes made with everything from corn and onions to red peppers and even jalapenos.
A tablespoon or two of all these relish variations works perfectly in virtually all egg salads.
If you're looking for more crunch in your egg salad, try dicing up some of your favorite
pickles instead. Bread and butter pickles, dill pickles, and gherkins are all ideal options.
At Easy Weeknight Recipes, diced dill pickle is the secret to a delectable egg salad.
The website said:
"The pickles add crunch and the dill adds freshness,
[creating] a creamy egg salad with chunks of juicy pickles in each and every bite!"
A bland, boring egg salad should almost be criminal. There's simply no excuse for not
adding one or more of your favorite spices to any egg salad you make,
elevating any ordinary dish to extraordinary.
The experts at Cooking Light recommend keeping calories in your egg salad low by playing with
spices. You can use fresh dill, basil and parsley. For a more international tasting dish, they also
recommend a curry and red bell pepper egg salad containing a teaspoon of, you guessed it: curry.
Foodie and author Katherine Flynn said:
"The curry powder compliments the creamy egg base while the peppers add a bright crunch."
At Lana's Cooking, the herbed egg salad contains cilantro, parsley, and capers,
while BetterNutrition's egg salad is bursting with flavor, due to the addition of fresh rosemary.
Thyme is another good option for adding flavor to egg salad. At Budget Bytes,
they've paired it with fresh lemon juice for a salad that's, quote,
"light, fresh, and summery!" Chef and cookbook author Beth Moncel runs the site, and she said:
"The combination of lemon juice and fresh herbs provides tang and a light
herbal flavor to contrast the rich eggs and mayonnaise based dressing."
Good egg salad is more than just hard-boiled eggs,
mayo, and spices. Like green salads and pasta salads, you can add in an almost
unlimited number of ingredients — and whatever you create will likely be pretty tasty.
For a dish that's reminiscent of breakfast,
try adding bacon crumbles to your egg salad. Food Network also suggests
freshly chopped chives, chunks of ripe avocado, and diced tomato as worthy egg salad additions.
In a discussion on Chowhound, home chefs have offered nearly everything but the kitchen sink
as possible delicious egg salad mix-ins. Popular suggestions include diced onion, diced celery,
red pepper slices, chunks of ham, diced grilled chicken,
anchovy, walnuts, capers, black and green olives, and even canned tuna.
Eating Well also has some great examples of egg salad meals. You can go for a "Sweet
Southern egg salad" that combines celery, gherkin pickles, and sweet onions to taste.
Or try "Cobb egg salad," which pairs egg salad with bacon, blue cheese, and avocado. "Niçoise egg
salad" — made with green beans, tuna and olives — is another hearty and mouth-watering option.
Whether you're dining on egg salad alone or you've made a big batch
of it for a picnic or holiday meal, know that bacteria can grow quickly
in the creamy food the longer it sits out and the warmer it gets.
Temperatures between 40 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit are all warm enough to encourage bacterial growth,
so even if your egg salad is sitting out in a cool house — compared to outside at a sunny day
picnic — it can still put your health at risk the longer it remains exposed to warm temperatures.
Still Tasty gives this important reminder:
"Egg salad should be discarded if left out for more than 2 hours at room temperature."
Southern Living has reported that egg salad that has been properly covered
and chilled in the refrigerator needs to be eaten within five days.
The magazine said:
"This rule also applies to similar mayonnaise-based salads like chicken,
tuna, ham, and macaroni salads."
Curious if your old egg salad is still good? Don't taste it! If you notice a bad smell or appearance,
it's time to throw it away and start a new batch. Your stomach will thank you!
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