Keep egg salad simple. Adding too many ingredients will just drown the lovely flavor and creaminess of the eggs. Mustard, mayo, salt, pepper and dill are all you need.
Cook’s notes
Growing up, egg salad sandwich was in my lunch box the most often. It’s easy to prepare, we love eggs and the flavors aren’t too complex for children. My mother used to make it Japanese style with nothing but mashed hard-boiled eggs, salt, a little pepper and mayo.
It was quite shocking for me to discover that there are places in the world where a whole lot of other things go into the mixture. Garlic, onion, celery, sweet pickle relish… It was a new experience and I embraced it.
But that period was short and my infatuation with egg salad with so many additions was fleeting. I’ve gone back to simplicity. Not as simple as the way my mother made it but not as over-the-top as others. Egg salad is just one of those dishes where the saying “less is more” holds true.
I start by mashing the hard boiled eggs with the back of a fork. Not too finely. I like texture in my egg salad so I stop mashing when the egg whites are about a quarter of an inch in size. The seasonings are simply salt and pepper. The amoung of mayo is kept to a minimum — just enough to bind everything together.
And then a squirt of plain mustard to add a little kick but without making the salad too tangy.
And, finally, dill. Why dill? Because it gives the egg salad (and any dish for that matter) a delicate citrusy aroma. The flavor is subtle but it just adds a lovely brightness that transforms something as simple as egg salad into a sandwich filling that you will want to enjoy often.
Mini baguettes are used here but egg salad is good with any kind of bread, really. If you want to serve it as an appetizer, cut bread into small pieces, top with a heap of egg salad, sprinkle with a bit of chopped dill and serve as mini open faced sandwiches.
Japanese mayo is our default at home. It’s thicker, tastier and full of umami goodness. If not using Japanese mayo, you may need to add a bit more salt to your egg salad.
No fuss egg salad sandwich
Ingredients
- 4 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon rock salt (reduce to ¾ teaspoon if using refined salt)
- ¼ teaspoon ground pepper
- 6 tablespoons Japanese mayonnaise
- 1 ½ tablespoons plain mustard
- 1 teaspoon chopped fresh dill plus more to garnish
- 4 mini baguettes toasted and split
Instructions
- Place the eggs in a sauce pan and pour in water to cover them by an inch.
- Heat until the water boils then cover the pan, turn off the heat and count ten minutes.
- Drain the eggs and soak in cold water until cool enough to handle.
- Peel the eggs and mash with the back of a fork.
- Add salt, pepper, mayo, mustard and dill, and stir just until the mixture acquires a uniform appearance.
- Spoon the egg salad into the split toasted mini baguettes, sprinkle with a little dill and enjoy.
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