Egg Salad week is observed as the first week, beginning Monday, after Easter. Eggs are used in several Easter and Passover traditions to represent new life. Between 1 and 5 dozen eggs are hard-boiled each year for dying and hunting during the Easter holiday. So, if you’re wondering what to do with the dozens of eggs you’ve accumulated during the holiday, we have a solution for you: Celebrate Egg Salad week.
It may seem crazy to have a whole week dedicated to egg salad, but according to the US Census Bureau, Americans consume, on average, about 254 eggs each year. And, after all, you’ve already hard-boiled so many eggs for Easter, why not use them in making a delicious meal to share amongst your family and friends?
Of course, you should be mindful of food safety in any situation where you are using or cooking with eggs. If eggs have been left out of the refrigerator for over 2 hours or if the eggs have cracked or been punctured, we recommend that you discard these eggs and boil new ones.
The perfect egg salad, begins with a perfectly hard-boiled egg. Here are step-by-step instructions on how to cook the perfect egg, compliments of The Incredible Edible Egg:
Step 1: PLACE eggs in saucepan large enough to hold them in single layer. ADD cold water to cover eggs by 1 inch. HEAT over high heat just to boiling. REMOVE from burner. COVER pan.
Step 2: LET EGGS STAND in hot water about 12 minutes for large eggs (9 minutes for medium eggs; 15 minutes for extra large).
Step 3: DRAIN immediately and serve warm. OR, cool completely under cold running water or in bowl of ice water, then REFRIGERATE.
(instead of adding the steps, we could just link to this page, under the keyword “perfectly hard-boiled egg” : http://www.incredibleegg.org/recipes/recipe/basic-hard-boiled-eggs )
If you’re new to perfecting the hard-boiled egg, you may have ended up with a greenish ring around the yolk. Don’t worry, this discoloration is perfectly harmless and is caused from a reaction between the sulfur in the egg and the iron in the yolk (or in cooking terms: when the egg is over-hard boiled and cooked for too long at a high temperature). To eliminate the greenish ring, the Incredible Edible Egg recommends you cook the eggs in hot, not boiling, water, and then cool them immediately after.
Egg Salad is a great way to utilize those already hard-boiled eggs from Easter, because classic egg salad(link to: http://www.incredibleegg.org/recipes/recipe/classic-egg-salad) only calls for a few ingredients: eggs, mayo, diced onion, lemon juice, salt, & pepper. Here are a few traditional ways to eat egg salad:
1. By itself/ on top of lettuce
2. As a sandwich on bread
3. Stuffed in a tomato or pepper
4. As an Egg Salad Wrap: Wrapped in a tortilla with lettuce
There’s no right way to make or eat egg salad and we encourage you to create your own recipe specific to your likings. To make a healthier version of egg salad (link to: http://www.incredibleegg.org/recipes/recipe/tomato-avocado-egg-salad), you can try substituting mayonnaise with light sour cream and adding avocado and tomatoes.
