Catastrophic Basics: Egg Salad 4 ways
Why hello there, and welcome to part 2 of Egg Week here at Kitchen Catastrophe, where we go from “here’s a recipe that uses SOME eggs” to “here’s a bunch of recipes that use a FUCK TON of eggs.” We will presumably follow this up with a recipe that uses ALL the eggs in an ovum-singularity. Today’s post is going to be RICH with recipes, but a little short on sparkle, I’m afraid, as I had a brief stomach bug Tuesday, so I’m having to crank this sucker out Wednesday morning, by which I mean Wednesday afternoon. Afternoon, the Morning of Quarantine! What are we talking about? EGGS.
SO many eggs.
Now, egg salad is a difficult recipe to pin down for much the same reason that Chicken Salad was more confusing than you’d expect. Basically, once mayonnaise was invented, it was kind of a matter of time before it showed up. The first recorded instance of an “egg salad” was in the 1890’s in a cookbook, but it’s likely the recipe predates that text. In fact, it’s almost certain that you could find something that would look like an egg salad years before anyone would have called it an egg salad, thanks to French sauce styles. Because in the 18th and 19th century, the format of labeling a dish in sauce in French cuisine was “protein sauce” (ie “chicken hollandaise” or “steak béarnaise”) meaning that the name for eggs served in mayonnaise (which was, at the time, a sauce, served on plenty of meats) would be “egg mayonnaise”. This, by the way, is what the British often call “egg salad” to this day. Along with what an American would call “tuna salad”. Technically, if the mixture is just “protein, mayo, mild seasoning”, it’s an “X mayo”. You need to add something else mixed into the sauce such as a more intense spice, or another chopped ingredient such as a vegetable, fruit, pickle, meat, or whatever, to make it a true “X salad” since the modern definition of a salad requires that it be a mixture of components. (As opposed to the classic Roman meaning, where it meant “salted/seasoned”.) But people screw it up on both sides.
Which is lucky, because, as you’ll soon see, the O’Guin Classic Egg Salad recipe has only 5 ingredients, and two of them are salt and pepper. But first, we gotta boil some eggs.
Bubble Bubble, Toil and Trouble
Because we were tackling so many variety of egg salad, and because Nate enjoys new experiences roughly as much as the average person likes stepping in puddles in socks, we agreed that, of the 2 dozen eggs we had, one dozen would be used to make the classic egg salad recipe, and I would get another dozen to make the three variants I was considering. Our recipe goes for fairly well-cooked eggs, done in the “steeping system” Meaning that we put the eggs in the water, bring it to a boil, REMOVE the pot from the heat, and let the eggs sit in the hot water until we think they’re done. Is this the best method for cooking eggs? Not according to some sources. But there are a TON of various arguments about cooking eggs, and what produces the best results, and, as I just noted, Nate isn’t one for trying new things, so if I attempted to up-end our entire egg-prep system as part of this, I would have faced at least two more catty comments about my incompetence.
And really, isn’t 56 enough for one hour?
We actually go for a fairly long time, in terms of cooking the eggs, probably because of my mother and grandmother’s system of “anything not fully cooked is suspect”, and the risk of salmonella that used to be a concern (the last 2-3 decades have seen the issue almost disappear) So if you’re looking for softer eggs, this is not the day for you. Ours steep for about 13-14 minutes. Then you move the eggs to a cold bath, with running water, and peel quickly. We used that method for all 4 batches.
Then we used our egg slicer to process the eggs, cutting them twice into strands of egg.
Eg-guillotine of yolks
SO, what do you do with the eggs once they’re done? Well, here’s some options, and our thoughts on the outcome.
The OG
The O’Guin recipe for Egg Salad isn’t a recipe. I know, because I asked for it, and was functionally laughed out of the conversation. It’s purely a matter of “we know what it looks like, so add until you get that look”. I want to say there’s at least 1/2 a cup of mayo used for 12 eggs, as well as a 10 oz can of sliced black olives.
That’s the one real ingredient we add, by the way: black olives. This recipe is eggs, mayo, salt and pepper, and sliced black olives. We just like how the black olives are kind of reminiscent of the egg white in texture, and provide a bit of brine to cut some of the fat, and also have a very vivid visual difference. We don’t add relish or anything, saving that for tuna salad.
This is actually not a standard batch, because it turns out, when you refuse to tell someone the recipe, they don’t buy enough sliced olives.
WHO’S LAUGHING NOW?
IT’s the classic we were raised with, so it of course gets high marks from us. It’s creamy, eggy, soft, with the only resistance being the slightly firmer olives. Bing bang boom.
Currying Favor
Did Jon eat the slice of bread with this salad on it before thinking “Hey, I should take pictures of these salads on the bread”? Yes.
Did he then HAVE A SECOND SANDWICH of it, while WRITING THIS POST, and forget he had failed previously, thus giving up two chances to get the picture?
The world may never know.
The first recipe I tried out was one from Bon Appetit, and it wasn’t ,as you might have guessed, the recipe for their “best ever” Egg salad, because THAT calls for sliced Green olives, and I hate green olives, so fuck that noise. Instead, I went for their “Curried Egg Salad” which is MUCH more involved than my family’s recipe, but still isn’t all that complicated. The big thing is that it turns out relatively few egg salad recipes ONLY use Mayonnaise as their sauce base. Many of them add in vinegar and mustard, as well as more vegetables. This one uses minced shallot, sliced green onions, and a surprising amount of fruit.
Then again, for many, I wager ANY amount of fruit in an egg salad is a “surprising” amount.
There is, I am pretty sure, MORE diced apple in this salad than sliced egg, by weight. Mixed with some ground cumin and curry powder, there’s definitely MORE going on in this sandwich than the first one. My mother had problem tasting the curry powder, which didn’t help our fears that she’s infected with COVID and just quietly infecting us all, but we didn’t pick up the pitchforks quite yet. She then asserted that it was fine, but felt it was missing something, an opinion we all “supported” in that I pointed out the recipe was supposed to have watercress, which Nate thought might have helped. There’s something about the way the apple is forward and bright, and then you get the lingering curry flavor, that you feel there should be a third component, like a little more spiciness or something. Still, it’s not bad at all.
Smoky “Spicy” Salad
Is egg salad visually distinct enough for pictures of each batch to be valuable?
Experts remain torn.
I’m not going to lie to you: one of the primary reasons I thought about making this post was because of, surprise, SortedFood. They did a video about updating sandwiches, and when Barry put (too much) cayenne in the egg salad recipe, it triggered in my brain the revelation that “oh, yeah, you could just ADD whatever spices to egg salad that you want!” Which actually was a double-trigger, since it reminded me of a discussion in Tom Ferris’s 4 Hour Cook where he mentions that eggs are a blank canvas, and proposes various spice mixes to learn about fundamental cultural flavor profiles on a blank canvas such as eggs, which HE does with scrambled eggs, but would be equally valid in Egg Salad. It’s egg and mayo. They’re both pretty damn blank canvases.
So in honor of that, I wanted one of the sandwich mixes to be spicy. And the first recipe I found for “spicy egg salad” was from Kim’s cravings, which was for Bacon-Sriracha Egg Salad, and was a surprisingly healthy recipe. It used Greek yogurt instead of mayo (which would drop the calorie count to like a quarter of what it was), it relied on turkey bacon, and was served in lettuce wraps. And that…wasn’t going to fly in my house. I’ll take the Yogurt suggestion, that’s fine. But screw Turkey bacon, we’re using real double-smoked bacon. And we’re putting it on bread. And no offense to Kim, but I’m something of a Spicelord, as Hot Ones says, so 2 teaspoons of Sriracha was not enough. In fact, we decided to integrate some more spice options.
Not that you can SEE that, since it’s mostly “splotches of red on a pale background”.
We used 1.5 pieces of bacon, 2 teaspoons of sriracha, 1 teaspoon of gochujang, and a couple dashes of Chipotle Cholula, all for an otherwise REDUCED recipe (the original recipe was for 6 eggs, we had 4) And honestly: no one in our family thought it was REMOTELY spicy. We could taste the gochujang a little, but otherwise, I think the Greek yogurt’s dairy absorbed too much of the “spice” of the mixture. I later added some smoked paprika (as in like, 20 minutes after we tried it) and tasting the mixture a couple days afterward, I think it was fairly smoky, with a hint of spiciness. So maybe it’s a matter of letting the flavors meld for a while.
The Devil’s In the Details
Weirdly, I feel like the egg looks different in each recipe, despite knowing it’s the sole CONSISTENT part.
The last Egg salad was based on the idea of deviled eggs. I like deviled eggs, I like egg salad, por qué no los dos, as they dice? Well, the answer to that question is “Maybe you should take measurements, Jon”. Like, I consulted a recipe, wrote down what was in it…and just didn’t write any measurements, and just winged it. Which actually might have worked, if I hadn’t had a fuck-up in the back half.
See, the basics of deviled eggs are pretty easy: it’s egg yolk mixed with mayo, vinegar, mustard, and paprika. The recipe I consulted called for diced celery, green onion, and red bell pepper. Advice I immediately ignored, because I didn’t buy any red bell pepper. And I used shallots instead of green onion and celery, because I thought it would be a nice middle-ground, and isn’t at all because I cut twice as much as I needed for the curried egg salad and was sick of chopping veggies.
I was also sick of taking pictures of it, so enjoy the last known photo of our Distilled White Vinegar.
Despite my jokes, I actually pulled the recipe up on my phone to get at least a vague idea of what proportions I was dealing with: about 1/3 cup of mayo, 2 tablespoons of Dijon, 1 tablespoon vinegar..reduce that to 1/3, so 2 tablespoons mayo, 2 teaspoons dijon, 1 teaspoon vinegar… a couple dashes of hot sauce and a couple of paprika…This tasted…okay, but it lacked the kind of “high ended” punch I liked from my deviled eggs, So maybe just a bit more mustard and…oh, I squeezed that container much harder than I thought. That’s like, an extra tablespoon of mustard. I’ve more than doubled it. And I do not have any more eggs… well, a little more vinegar and paprika might balance it, right?
The answer was no. Personally, I didn’t hate the mixture, but, as noted by the other tasters, this was, flavor-wise, basically “eggs in mustard sauce”. The mustard was the ONLY thing you could taste. And that’s on me. If you make these, be very careful about adding your mustard (or use a less potent mustard, like plain Yellow mustard).
A summary of sorts
And that’s the arrangement. 4 types of egg salad. And this is only scratching the surface. You can make your own herby mayo (maybe something like chives, or tarragon) and mix up egg salad with that. You can make your mayo more lemony, try that out. You can mix the two, and have lemon-herb mayo. You could do a garlic aioli, paprika, and ham, for a sort of Spanish Egg Salad. Egg salad IS a canvas, and you can paint whatever you want on it. (I’ve just realized that I could make an unholy Scotch Egg Salad recipe to torment myself and others…My initial research shows a bunch of normal salads with Scotch eggs added, so I may be on the forefront of this abomination.) The point is to not be afraid of incorporating some new colors onto the pallete you’re painting with.
FRIDAY: THE EGG ROLL, WHICH USES NO EGGS AT ALL, AND THE EGG FOLD, WHICH I REFUSE TO EXPLAIN FURTHER.
MONDAY: WE MIGHT DO A WEEK OF VEGAN STUFF. I DON’T KNOW. I’M STILL FLAILING.
Here's a lot of
Recipes
The OG Hard Boiled Eggs
Makes 12 eggs
Ingredients
A dozen eggs
Water
Preparation
Place enough water to cover all the eggs, plus an extra 1” of water. Place on a burner, on high heat. Bring to a boil, covered, and then remove from the heat, and let sit 13-15 minutes.
Remove eggs from hot water to a bath of cold water, and peel immediately.
The OG Egg Salad
Makes a lot of sandwiches
Ingredients
12 eggs
A big can of sliced black olives
“enough” mayo.
Preparation
Mix all ingredients, adding additional mayo until proper consistency is reached.
Curried Egg Salad
Makes 4 sandwiches
Ingredients
1/4 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons scallion, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon shallot, minced
1 1/2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon (heaping) curry powder
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
4 large hard-boiled eggs, chopped
1 medium Granny Smith apple, peeled and cut into 1/8-inch cubes
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
Preparation
Whisk all ingredients except eggs and apple together until well incorporated. Fold in eggs and apple, season with salt and pepper.
Smokey Spicy Egg Salad
Makes 3-4 sandwiches
Ingredients
1.5 pieces double-smoked thick bacon, cooked and chopped
1/4 cup thinly sliced green onions
2 tablespoons plain non-fat Greek yogurt
1 tablespoon mayo
2 teaspoons Sriracha or sambal
1 teaspoon gochujang
2 dashes smoked or chipotle hot sauce
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/8 teaspoon sea salt
1/8th teaspoon smoked paprika
4 large hard-boiled eggs peeled & chopped
bread or lettuce wraps for serving
Preparation
Mix all ingredients except bread/lettuce wraps in a large bowl until mixture is well combined. Let chill in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
Spoon onto bread or lettuce wraps and serve.
Deviled Egg Salad, Maybe
Makes about 2 cups salad
Ingredients
4 large eggs
1 tablespoon minced shallot
Probably 1 tablespoon of another veggie, like celery or bell pepper
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon cider or white wine vinegar
1/4 teaspoon Tabasco or other hot sauce
1/4 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
Preparation
Mix all ingredients together, and season to taste.
