Isn't egg salad great?

[stephle]

Egg-salad strategy tidbit: I've found that sometimes in a worst-case scenario, like when you're on a road-trip and there's nothing to eat, you can acquire a hard-cooked egg from a mini-mart or even a vending machine. Then you can acquire a few of those little plastic packets of mayonnaise from a fast-food restaurant or other source of free condiments. Hard-cooked egg + mayonnaise + fork = egg salad.

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I used to do this when I was doing LC and stuck on the road for a snack. Did you ever felt guilty about taking the condiments for this?

For some reason, I always felt like I was committing a crime or something -- I mean, it wouldn't have been a problem if I were taking the mayo and mustard (the road trip version must have mustard in it) for one of the stale sandwiches in the refrigerator case, but somehow the knowledge that they were destined for better things made it all seem very sneaky and I felt the need to keep them hidden tightly in my fist while paying for the eggs so the clerk wouldn't know that in 5 minutes I'd be scarfing something totally unworthy of his dingy gas station.

[wawairis]

My ex-MIL would add a can of tuna to her egg salad, which always included chopped onion, pickle, salt and pepper.  It actually wasn't half bad, even though the combination does sound a bit odd.  I will make it every once in a while this way.  However, the favorite is egg (of course), mayo, green onion, Dijon mustard, salt and pepper on toasted multi-grain.

Edited:  I gotta try the addition of bacon!

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That's how my Mom made tuna salad when I was a kid. I suspect it was cheap way to stretch the tuna salad between four kids, but we all grew to love it. I still make it like that occasionally, and enjoy.

The best egg salad sandwich (with bacon) I ever had was at a little luncheonette not far from my job. The bread was rye, the portion of egg salad to bread was sublime and the bacon was crisp. It was a poem! And only like $3.25! What's not to love?

[follonica2]

I'm all for egg salad, as either Fat Guy or The Old Foodie described it at the very start of this important discussion. Hard to improve on either of those ideas.

But there is yet a remaining vital question attached to the idea of egg salad sandwich, though, and that is how thick should it be layered onto the sandwich? This can make or break an egg salad sandwich, leaving one greatly disappointed or even vaguely angry, if it is not engineered correctly before taking a bite.

The best egg salad sandwich I ever had was in London. It was a perfect little rectangle of Best British wheat bread filled with egg salad that approached a puree in texture, with only tiny little bites of hard white here and there to be found.

The bread was very soft and thin and a bit nutty from wheat kernels that also seemed tiny and precise, self-deprecatory wheat kernels they were, rather than the usual huge lumbersome kernels that are always trying to get stuck in your teeth. It was topped with the loveliest little alfalfa sprouts, darling alfalfa sprouts, and just enough of them. They were not even peeking over the edge of the sandwich in a rude fashion but rather honored their inner selves as sprouts by retiring gently between the slices of bread to cuddle up next to the finesse of the egg salad, knowing that soon they would be eaten but ready and willing for the eventuality to occur. For of course, they were sprouts and they knew their place. One might say they closed their eyes and thought of England but I doubt those sprouts were even that pushy.

There was also a shimmer, the merest shimmer if that is possible, of Branston pickle on one side of the sandwich. Which added the merest savory bite to the whole otherwise gently receding yet delightfully tasty experience.

But the core question here is the thickness of egg salad. You can not layer on egg salad with a trowel as if it were roast beef, or turkey. No no no. It is a crime against the tastebuds of humanity to attempt that. It must be a rather thin, perfectly measured layer throughout the sandwich with not the least bit of deviation in height, otherwise the perfection will be quite off, to the point of ruination.

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ROTFLMAO!! Brilliant.

[Toliver]

Forgive me. Still-warm hard-boiled egg, room-temperature mayonnaise, salt, freshly ground white pepper, crushed together with a fork until medium chunky, served on whole-wheat sourdough toast with Romaine lettuce.

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Not to get too technical here, but isn't that just an egg sandwich? I mean, it doesn't really matter how the egg is prepared, it's still sounds like you're making just an egg sandwich with a condiment.

I would assume that in using the term "egg salad" (emphasis on "salad"), there would be more ingredients involved other than just egg and mayo.

I make mine more along the lines of a tuna salad, except swapping out the one protein (tuna) for another (egg).

[Fat Guy]

That's not how I've ever seen the term used. Egg salad = egg and mayo mixed together. Just as tuna salad = tuna and mayo. You can add more stuff, too. Maybe if you spread may on bread, then put sliced egg on the bread, that would be an egg sandwich.

[dockhl]

Celery. Hellman's (Best Foods). Bacon. Rye toast. Dill.

[slkinsey]

Strangely, I find the idea of egg salad revolting. Too squishy.

On the other hand, I love a sandwich made with sliced hard boiled eggs in the middle and lots of mayonnaise spread on each slice of bread.

[ChefCrash]

Warm eggs, diced onions and tomatoes, parsley, olive oil, Salt pepper and Cumin.

[GTO]

I'm too sure about the South (Because they're stupid heads ) but the classic classic Northern "Egg Mayonaisse" is made with diced hard boiled eggs, salt, pepper and Heinz Salad Cream. Genius!

[melkor]

Strangely, I find the idea of egg salad revolting.  Too squishy.

On the other hand, I love a sandwich made with sliced hard boiled eggs in the middle and lots of mayonnaise spread on each slice of bread.

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So eggs + mayo squished together in advance and put on bread == revolting. Eggs sliced and places on bread coated with mayo and squished together by mouth == delicious.

I like egg salad, but it's the sort of thing I only eat a few times a year. It's a bit too gloppy, maybe I need to make it with duck eggs so it's got a higher yolk %. Before I go searching for duck eggs, has anyone tried this?

[Marigene]

Eggs chopped very fine, a little Dijon, Hellmann's, grated onion, finely chopped celery and a couple shakes of Penzeys Ozark seasoning on pumpernickel and I call it egg salad sandwich.

[Special K]

Mmmmm . . . egg salad! I usually just make it as Fat Guy does, but sometimes I use chipotle mayo. I've never tried it with duck eggs, but I will!

Oh, man, I want some egg salad NOW!

[slkinsey]

Strangely, I find the idea of egg salad revolting.  Too squishy.

On the other hand, I love a sandwich made with sliced hard boiled eggs in the middle and lots of mayonnaise spread on each slice of bread.

So eggs + mayo squished together in advance and put on bread == revolting. Eggs sliced and places on bread coated with mayo and squished together by mouth == delicious.

Exactly!!! But, I'm telling you, there's something about the saladification process that makes egg salad more squishy than sliced eggs.

[Fat Guy]

One thing you can do to up your yolk ratio is discard half the whites.

Those who don't like egg salad may just have an anti-egg-salad preference. Or, they may never have had good egg salad. Cold, overcooked egg mush -- rubbery and slimy at the same time -- with an alarmingly high percentage of bad mayonnaise is as representative of good egg salad as Sizzler's "Petite Lunch Steak" is of a USDA Prime, dry-aged porterhouse. I urge anybody in that position to try a freshly cooked (not overcooked, no green yolk) egg, still warm, lightly chopped/mashed with a fork with some good mayonnaise, salt and pepper, so there are some big chunks, some smaller chunks and some nearly pureed parts.

[K8memphis]

Well shredded is better. Uniform egg goo. And sorry, Carrot Top, an inch thick! MMM

Edited June 21, 2007 by K8memphis (log)

[jsmith]

Bacon, hard boiled eggs, green onions and homemade mayonaisse. Or skip the bacon and use curry mayonaisse.

The homemade mayonaisse is the most important. I'm fine with Hellman's on sandwiches, ect. but eating it in egg salad makes me feel like I'm eating spoonfuls of margerine for some reason.

[jsmeeker]

for me, warm egg salad would mean warm mayo. And I just don't like warm mayo..

But yes, egg salad (for a sandwich) is tasty. I'll cruise through this thread for tips on jazzing up my egg salad.

[opqdan]

One of my more vivid childhood memories is eating a picnic with 2 or three of my sisters just outside the house in the backyard. I remember no other part of it than that it was quite possibly the first time I had ever had egg salad. At the very least, it was the first time that I can remember, and there must be some reason that this memory has stuck with me for so long. Since the only interesting part of it was the egg salad, I will assume that was it.

I don't recall my little brother being there, so I would have been less than 6 years old, and I am not sure whether my littlest sister was there, which if she was would have made me older than 4.

Not that it was great egg salad though. My mother was never a bad cook (I love her food), but she has a tendency, as most people do, to over cook everything into oblivion. Egg salad would then consist of rubbery whites, chalky green yolks, a lot of mayonaise, and a little mustard depending on who was pestering her at the time (I would tell her to add more, my sisters would tell her to add less).

This thread is putting me in the mood for egg salad tonight. I haven't had it for years, and I suppose it isn't really dinner, but now that I've got my mind set on it...

capers and horseradish? Too strong?

[v. gautam]

In the days Yale dining halls cooked their own food [ a year or so ago I returned hoping to taste some old favorites and received a nasty shock: food service handed over to a contractor, gone are some of the endearing and absurd items and traditions, e.g. the frenched green beans and pimentos on the steam tables? I accidentally discovered their inimitable flavor when I recovered an ancient packet lost in the freezer for more than a year: Great Age!

Anyhow, returning to the topic of egg salad, in my opinion, Yale served some of the best, on the hard rolls that are so characteristic of New Haven but difficult to find as well made elsewhere.

Almost directly across Phelps Gate, across the Green and Church Street, in a Municipal building, I forget if it was the courthouse or some such, but entering from Church Street there was a tiny lunch counter tucked under a staircase, serving some of the finest egg salad, again on that hard roll, with or without seed.

A few years later, after 1982, two lunch trucks began to appear, one outside the Yale Health Plan, the second just below Science Hill. Both served excellent egg salad, but the second one did something ambrosial to its offering. That truck seems to have disappeared, beset by a number of food vendors never before allowed on campus in the 70s and 80s.

BTW, Yale's chicken salad and clam chowder in a marmite topped by a pastry crust were also fabulous.

g

P.S. With all these New Haven salads, they got the size of the egg particles 'right' for my taste, likewise that of wahtever else they were putting in, and also the temperature. That is not to say that each venue had the same type; not so. The particle sizes varied from more comminuted at one vendor to larger at another, celery in some, none in others, black pepper likewise, amount of mayo, even presence of sour cream [i suspect, in one]. Temperatures also varied, being much cooler from the lunch trucks. But whatever each was doing, clicked together at that place, bread, filling, temperature, lettuce [shredded, pieces etc.]. That they were distinctly not uniform but individually excellent added to the delight of seeking each out.

Edited June 21, 2007 by v. gautam (log)

[Fat Guy]

Well shredded is better. Uniform egg goo.

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I don't see the attraction of uniformity here, when you can have a variety of textures instead.

[mizducky]

I adore egg salad -- actually I adore hard-cooked eggs in all forms, including plain, deviled, chopped as a garnish, etc. etc. etc.

I have a distinct preference for my egg salad to be majorly chunky. I will eat egg salads in which the egg has been minced or pulverized to a paste, but it almost ruins it for me.

My favorite egg salad addition is chopped onion or scallions. Chopped celery is nice too. No sweet additions for me--forget the sweet relish. And while the gentleman I now cook for has gotten me to at least tolerate Miracle Whip in the house, I much prefer mayonnaise. And I like to use the bare minimum of mayo necessary to make all these ingredients adhere into a salad. (I suspect that some of the egg-salad haters posting to this topic may have had traumatic experiences with egg salad reduced to glop by way too much mayonnaise added to way too finely-grated eggs combined with insuifficiently-drained pickle relish.)

Seasonings: lots of black pepper, a touch of salt.

Sometimes I'll just eat it plain out of the bowl; sometimes I like it on a good sturdy bread, often toasted; sometimes I'll spread it on crackers or stuff it into ribs of celery.

I have recently discovered the joys of Chinese preserved duck eggs a.k.a. "thousand year eggs." I bet one could make one hell of a fascinating egg salad with some of those! (Probably using something other than mayonnaise as the binder, though...)

Edited June 21, 2007 by mizducky (log)

[The Old Foodie]

Here is a totally different take, from a cookbook from 1827.

Egg Salad.

Boil six cloves of garlic six minutes, and pound them with a few capers and two anchovies; mix them very well with oil, salt, pepper, and vinegar, and dish it under hard-boiled eggs, whole or cut in two.

[Sony]

Here is a totally different take, from a cookbook from 1827.

Egg Salad.

Boil six cloves of garlic six minutes, and pound them with a few capers and two anchovies; mix them very well with oil, salt, pepper, and vinegar, and dish it under hard-boiled eggs, whole or cut in two.

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I just used my last egg for breakfast . Starting this weekend, I'm on travel for the next few weeks. But that may be the first thing I make when I'm back from vacation . I'll probably add some fresh chopped parsley or chives so that the freshness cuts through some of the pungent saltiness.

Edited June 21, 2007 by Sony (log)

[mizducky]

Here is a totally different take, from a cookbook from 1827.

Egg Salad.

Boil six cloves of garlic six minutes, and pound them with a few capers and two anchovies; mix them very well with oil, salt, pepper, and vinegar, and dish it under hard-boiled eggs, whole or cut in two.

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Oh, the garlic sounds like a fun idea--everything's better with garlic. I might not do it like that recipe, but now I have the thought that subbing some soft-roasted garlic for at least some of the mayo in a "modern" egg salad could be very very nice.

An earlier post (too lazy to look back and find it) raised the question of the difference between a hardboiled egg sandwich and an egg salad sandwich. Well, if you make your egg salad pretty chunky as I do, the line does begin to look a little blurred. But in my sandwich-making at least, there is a distinct difference between slices of hardboiled egg laid out on mayo-spread bread, vs. hard-boiled eggs mashed, bound with some mayo, and then spread on some bread. Both of which I like lots, by the way--I just like 'em in different ways.

Oh yeah--there have also been some opinions about spreading the salad thin vs. thick. I'm definitely in the spread-it-on-thickly camp--which is a friendlier way to use chunky egg salad anyway.

[K8memphis]

Well shredded is better. Uniform egg goo.

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I don't see the attraction of uniformity here, when you can have a variety of textures instead.

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That's not a tremendous amount of texture variety. But still yet you have the bread and chips (aka Munchos if you must). Egg salad would make a great dip for Munchos! Shredded of course.

I would rather crunch on a pickle than a blob of egg.

Or add some tuna.

And a great add in is brocolli spots, just the little bright green dots.

Stunner beautiful egg salad.