As the name suggests, egg salad is a dish whose primary component is the egg.
The basic egg salad recipe involves creatively mixing the egg with seasonings, herbs, spices, and other ingredients bound with mayonnaise or its substitutes.
Making the egg salad is relatively easy and not stressful at all.
Notwithstanding, getting this dish right can be pretty tricky. It’s just a perfect example of the oxymoron “simply hard.”
If you don’t mix this correctly, you may end up with a dull, bland mayo-laden dish.
But, get this dish right, and you will keep returning for second helpings. You need the right ingredients for this rich, creamy, vibrant dish.
The foundation matters a lot. Right here, the ingredient lays the foundation. So, keep reading as we explore the basic egg salad recipe.
We will look at two recipes that can give us this sumptuous goodness. Of course, the base of both recipes will be our egg.
The recipes here are:
- Delicious, easy egg salad recipe
- Classic egg salad recipe
1. Delicious Easy Egg Salad Recipe
We will use just a few ingredients for this basic egg salad recipe. The steps are pretty simple, too. So, the ingredients for egg salad here are:
Ingredients for This Recipe
- Six large eggs (make it eight eggs if there aren’t large)
- ½ cup mayonnaise or ½ cup plain Greek yogurt (your choice)
- One teaspoon of prepared yellow mustard (you can use Dijon mustard here, too)
- ¼ cup finely chopped onion (be it red or green- your choice)
- ¼ teaspoon paprika (or to taste)
- ¼ teaspoon of salt (or to taste)
So, that is our delicious basic egg salad recipe. Now, let’s look at how to prepare this dish.
Directions for Preparing This Egg Salad
- Hard boil your eggs. Place your eggs in a pot and cover them with cold water. Bring water to a boil over medium-high heat. Please turn off the heat when it comes to a hard boil. Cover the pot adequately with a lid and allow the eggs to sit covered for 12 minutes. You can transfer the eggs to ice water to stop the cooking process, and the eggs will be cool enough to handle after 1-2minutes. You can then peel the eggs.
- Chop the eggs and place them in a bowl. At this point, chop the onion and add it to the bowl.
- Whisk the Dijon or yellow mustard, plain Greek yogurt (or mayonnaise), salt, and paprika in a separate bowl.
- Add the chopped eggs and onions to the dressing and stir until well combined.
- Taste and season as desired (add salt and pepper at intervals to get the right mix). Your egg salad is ready. You can serve it on bread or over lettuce. Enjoy!
2. Classic Egg Salad Recipe
We will incorporate more ingredients here for our classic egg salad recipe. For clarity, this recipe will be divided into two sections.
The first section deals with the salad, and the second deals with the dressing. Let’s look at the classic basic egg salad recipe here.
Ingredients for This Salad
- Six large hard-boiled eggs
- Three tablespoons of chopped chives
- Two tablespoons of chopped celery
- Three tablespoons of chopped red/ green onion,
- Three tablespoons of chopped dill
- Three tablespoons of cubed avocado
- You can include some pieces of crispy bacon or chicken for protein
- For more veggies, you can add carries, cucumbers, or tomatoes for a classier and yummy taste.
Ingredients for the Dressing
The importance of dressing in a salad cannot be overemphasized. Dressing adds flavor to salad and gives it an eye-catching, mouth-watering look.
Let’s look at the basic egg salad recipe in tandem with dressing.
- 1/3 cup mayonnaise or Greek yogurt
- Two teaspoons of yellow mustard
- Two teaspoons of lemon juice
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon ground pepper
- 1garlic of minced clove
- You can blend some Avocado for fresh creaminess and healthy fats to replace some mayo.
Directions for Preparing This Egg Salad
Now we have our ingredients, let’s spice up!
- Cook the eggs as outlined above using our easy recipe method. Peel and chop the eggs, then place them in a bowl.
- Add the chopped celery, chives, onion, dill, and avocado to the eggs.
- Mix the dressing ingredients in a different bowl. i.e., bring the mayonnaise (or Greek yogurt), yellow mustard, garlic, lemon juice, salt, and pepper together. You can also add your blended avocado here for thickness.
- Gently stir the dressing into the egg salad until it becomes creamy and thoroughly incorporated.
- Your egg salad is ready! You can serve it with lettuce wraps, potato chips, French fries, coleslaw, cheese sticks, etc.
Conclusion
The basic egg salad recipe is pretty easy to put together. Whether you’re making delicious or classic egg salad, it just requires some basic ingredients you can easily whip up.
Besides, this dish is inexpensive, healthy, and packed with proteins. With zero carbs from the egg and little to no sugar, it fills you up nicely.
If you make a salad and it’s runny, you can quickly fix it by adding a couple more eggs to thicken the salad or adding a tablespoon of breadcrumbs to absorb some extra moisture. Bon appetit!
