After a weekend visiting my parents in Wisconsin, I’m usually sent home with a couple of grocery bags packed with corn, cheese, brats, strawberries and, last but not least, several cartons of large, brown “farm fresh” eggs. I don’t eat a ton of eggs in the first place, which means I’m usually left boiling a few dozen to stretch their longevity, in the hopes that I’ll eventually eat them and not waste so much food.
However, a guy can only eat like, three mushy egg salad sandwiches before losing all grip on reality. But you can do more with hard-boiled eggs than muddle them with a bunch of mayonnaise, right?
To find out, I asked culinary experts to save me from all the hard-boiled eggs sitting in my fridge.
Boiled Egg Breakfast Burritos
“Yeah, there’s only so much love for egg salad, huh?” says Ben Rayl, a chef and food-truck operator in Denver. Besides eating them straight or making deviled eggs — the unhinged cousin of egg salad sandwiches — Rayl offers “adding sliced or chopped boiled eggs to breakfast burritos, breakfast sandwiches or avocado toast.”
You could “use them in a breakfast hash or savory oatmeal as well,” he says. Eggs are already a breakfast staple, so hard-boiled eggs are easy to incorporate into just about any savory breakfast recipe.
Boiled Egg Soup and Salad Toppers
In a similar vein, hard-boiled eggs are perfect additions to any soup or salad for extra protein. “Thinly slicing hard-boiled eggs or using a hard-boiled egg slicer is the way to go when adding them to any salad,” explains Jessica Randhawa, head chef for The Forked Spoon. “They go great with soup, particularly ramen — Kimchi Ramen Noodle Soup is one of my favorite soup recipes that calls for hard-boiled eggs and only takes 30 minutes to make.”
Boiled Egg Curry Compliment
If ramen isn’t your thing, Farwin Simaak, recipe creator for Love & Other Spices, suggests adding boiled eggs to your favorite premade butter chicken or tikka masala sauce. Whether the eggs are a stand-in for, or compliment to, another protein in the dish, “all you have to do is slice them in half, add them to the simmering sauce and cover for two to three minutes,” he says. “Then serve it with naan for a quick and easy dinner!”
Boiled Eggs for Persian Potato Salad
Chef Lina Jabbari recommends one of her favorite Persian egg recipes. “There’s a popular street food that originates in Tabriz called Yeralma Yumurta,” she explains. “It’s a super easy comfort dish — just hot mashed potato, mashed boiled egg, mixed butter, mint, salt and pepper. It’s great for summer picnics and BBQs.”
Boiled Egg Mediterranean Orzo Egg Salad
“My favorite salad to incorporate eggs into is this Mediterranean-style orzo salad,” says Aysegul Sanford, recipe creator and owner of Foolproof Living. “It’s filled with zesty fresh flavorings with a comforting base of carbs. Bring it to a BBQ or make it as a lunch side dish. It uses plenty of eggs and will be devoured in no time.”
Hard-Boiled Blender Eggs
Finally, if you just can’t stand the idea of eating hard-boiled eggs no matter how they’re pickled, sliced, chopped or mashed, try pulverizing them. “This is going to sound crazy, but hard-boiled eggs work pretty well in smoothies — the whites especially, but you can use the entire egg,” says Rayl. “As long as you have a good balance of sweet fruits and liquid, you likely won’t notice the flavor. But they blend up very well and act as a thickener, too.”
Along those lines, Rayl offers “whizzing the boiled eggs up to use as a base for a pasta sauce — think eggs, stock, white wine, garlic and herbs.” The eggs “thicken and provide fat to the sauce,” he says, “which helps to coat the noodles and veggies you toss them with.”
And there you have it: You no longer have any excuses whatsoever for choking down yet another mushy egg salad sandwich.
Quinn Myers
Quinn Myers is a staff writer at MEL. He reports on internet culture, technology, health, masculinity and the communities that flourish within.
