I like the flavor of my basic egg salad recipe, but I’m used to egg salad being roughly the consistency of mayonnaise, and even after hours in the fridge mine is runny. Is there something in my recipe that’s causing this, or does anybody have any suggestions? Thanks!
While eggs cook, mix mayo, mustard, relish, onion, salt & pepper together to give onion time to reconstitute. Peel eggs, slice finely*, fold into mixture. Cover and chill 3-4 hours.
I use an egg slicer: cut once, then rotate the egg and cut again at 90 degrees to the first cut.
Hmm, aside from the relish it seems the same as mine which comes out thick but I don’t use exact measurements, I just eyeball it. So I couldn’t tell you if the amounts of may and mustard look okay.
I don’t use relish though, maybe your relish has too much liquid in it? You could try letting it drain in a strainer or press between paper towels. Or maybe your mustard is too runny? Perhaps you could also try letting it drain a little in a very fine strainer or coffee filter? I also cut my eggs up chunky but I’m not sure if that would make a difference with the runniness.
I was wondering about the relish. I hadn’t thought about draining it, that’s a good idea. I did try to get less of the liquidy part of it when I made yesterday’s batch. Next time I’ll drain it, or I’ll leave it out altogether to see what difference it makes.
You’ve got nearly four TBSP of semi-liquid ingredients with four lonely eggs. My guess is that the relish is causing the mayo to separate. I’d stop pre-mixing. Mix everything with the egg and let the flavors meld together in the fridge. Oh, and what Zab said.
I wonder if maybe something like bread crumbs or cracker crumbs could be used as a binder? Not a lot, but enough to pull things together? (If you try that, don’t drain the relish.) You might find a balance that wouldn’t alter the taste, but would make a good spread?
Failing that, just construct sandwich by sandwich instead of making an egg salad mix? By that I mean, spread one slice with mayo, the other with mustard, (ETA: Or mix the mayo and mustard together in the mix you like, and spread a little on both pieces of bread?) add a mix of sweet relish, chopped eggs and onion (salted and peppered) and enjoy. In other words, leave out most of the wet ingredients, and put them on the bread just prior to eating.
That’s a question! Hey, Chefguy, what about if they try a little powdered mustard, and keep the rest of what they were doing the same? Might that fix the problem? NOTE: It only takes a little bit to go a LONG ways with ground mustard seed!
This is your problem, it’s just too much fluid relative to the solids. Drain (or reduce) the relish &/or add 1-2 more eggs, don’t pre-mix & use real onions.
I just caught that he was using minced onions! But real onions taste differently. Hmmm, in the suggestion I made above, about making one sandwich at a time, add the minced onions to the mustard/mayo mixture to spread then. You could even let that mixture sit over night, maybe with a little of the relish juice put in too? Really though, I think my most recent suggestion might be a workable, low fuss solution.
I hate boiled eggs, so I will never in a million years make egg salad, but are you letting the eggs cool before you chop them up? I have observed my mother making egg salad, and her eggs are always cold. Either she lets them sit in cold water for 15-20 minutes or she makes them the day before and takes them out of the fridge.
Per Alton’s boiled egg method, after steeping for 15 minutes, they cool off in cold water for about 3 to make them safe to handle for peeling, but no, I’m not cooling them off further after that. I confess that after learning Alton’s method, I have become quite addicted to hard boiled eggy-weggs.
I had the same problem you’re having when I made potato salad. I make mine with both mayo and olive oil/vinegar. I used to let the minced veggies and herbs sit in the mayo and oil/vinegar mix while the potatoes cooked. Result: a soupy mess that was more like a salad dressing than anything else. Liquid + mayo results in, well, more liquid. Mayo is, of course, nothing more than beaten eggs and oil. If you introduce a non-protein ingredient to that, it’s likely to separate into its components, much like any sauce.
So that’s another recommendation for not bringing my ingredients together until the last minute? I can always just let the onions reconstitute in a tbsp. of warm water before patting them dry and adding them at the end.
BTW, the reason I’m not using fresh onion is that I’d never get through an entire onion before it went bad. This recipe makes 3-4 sandwiches for me, and that’s lunch for a couple of days. The amount of onion I’m using is less than one thin slice chopped fine, and I just don’t want to waste that much onion. Maybe once I’m cooking more dinners, and can use up the onion more readily I’ll switch over.
Also re the eggs if you are introducing them into the mixture before cooling completely the heat will tend to make the mayo destabilize and go "soupy’.
