Easy Egg Salad

So you colored the eggs all the beautiful colors of the rainbow for Easter. Your kids had so much fun finding them…so, now what do you do with all these eggs?  I don’t know about your family, but we usually have at least 12 hard-boiled eggs along with 30+ plastic eggs that my kids want to leave out for the Easter Bunny!  They love the looking for the eggs on Easter morning.  While we can just put the plastic eggs away for next time, there are a lot of hard boiled eggs that need to be eaten.  Sometimes we just eat them plain or add them to a green salad, but one of my favorite recipes to use up the eggs is Egg Salad Sandwiches. 

This recipe is pretty easy to make.  First, peel the eggs.  Not the most fun thing to do, I know.  But with a great new tip to cook and peel your eggs, it doesn’t have to be so bad…

First, to cook your eggs,  place them in a single layer in a pot with cold water one inch above the eggs.  Bring the water to a rolling boil and then cover the pot, remove from heat and let the eggs sit for ten minutes.  Now, here is the part that will make it easier to peel those eggs…

Pour a quart (four cups) of cold water into a large bowl and add one tray of ice cubes.  Set that aside.  Drain the hot water from the pot and gently tilt the pot back a forth a few times so the eggs crack a little.  Then place them into the ice water using a slotted spoon and leave them in there for five minutes.  Then remove them and peel away…they should peel very easily for you.

I recently learned about this in my new book I got for Christmas, The Science of Good Cooking cookbook.  Why does this cooking and cooling method work so well?  If interested, keep reading…

As an egg cooks, the layer of protein in the white part of the egg that is closest to the outer shell will slowly bond with it.  If you have a hard boiled egg at room temperature or one that is ran under cold running water, it will cool somewhat slowly, giving the protein enough time to form a strong bond with the shell…making peeling not such an easy task.  So shocking the egg in the ice water will quickly stop the bonding process.  Also, the quick cooling causes the cooked egg white to shrink and pull away from the shell, making it much easier to remove the shell while keeping the white part of the egg intact and looking nice. (I know I have peeled some eggs in the past and they did not look very appetizing after peeled!)  And why gently tilt the pot back and forth to crack the eggs a little?  That part helps loosen the egg shells even more and cool the eggs quicker.  

Once peeled, slice the eggs into small pieces.  Finely chop the onion and celery.  Mix all the ingredients together.  We like to serve it on bread (sometimes toasted bread), with a “healthy dose” of dark salad greens and sliced tomato.  (My healthy dose is what I call a generous serving!)  This makes for a great dinner when you don’t have much time or also on a hot summer day when it is just too hot to cook!  Being that it is early spring here in Western NY and the temperature is in the 40’s, I am looking forward to those days!  :o)

~Jeannie