Easter Sunday, post-egg hunt. Now you’ve got three dozen hardboiled eggs, give or take, and a window of freshness in which to use them. What to do. You could compost them, give them to the dog, stuff them into your children’s backpacks and hope they don’t missil-ize them on the bus.
OR you could channel our Depression-era grandparents (or great-grandparents as the case may be) and eat them. Waste Not Want Not. It’s a bit of advice in opposition to the ‘just go out and shop’ consumer economy we’ve built, but it’s something that most parents at least consider when faced with all those eggs we dyed for Easter.
That is, of course, if you end up with them. One year, the kids and I dyed several dozen eggs the day before Easter. The next morning, I got up at what felt like o-dark-hundred but was actually about 5AM to hide them. Since it was pouring rain, I hid them inside the house. By the time I had showered and the kids were up, we came back down stairs to colored eggshells strewn from pillar to post; the border collie had found and eaten every last one. (She suffered for it, I was glad to note.).
If you don’t have a perpetually ravenous pooch, you’re probably going to end up with a load of hardboiled eggs post-Easter. Most dyes these days are food-safe; even if the egg cracks and leaves colored veins on the whites, you can still use it without worry. (Be sure to check on the dye packages about food safety, though.).
If you’ve got a big family meal in the offing, you can make deviled eggs – always a hit. This time, you may want to try some of the different deviled egg recipes below to make the relatives sit up and take notice. Salmon-stuffed deviled eggs, deviled eggs with sweet pickle and capers, and Italian-style with prosciutto and parmesan all sound yummy. There is even a link to deep-fried deviled eggs, which sounds to me as revolting as Elvis’s deep-fried Twinkies, but there may well be someone who thinks they’re the best thing since shoo-fly pie. I usually make curried deviled eggs with some of the mild curry I get in bulk from Chestertown Natural Foods.
On the other hand, if you can’t face dozens of deviled eggs, there are some other great options. Egg salad sandwiches with plenty of celery and scallion on toasted rye with lettuce. Sliced hard-boiled eggs in cheddar sauce on whole grain toast, hardboiled eggs in tuna casserole, chopped hardboiled egg sauce on steamed asparagus vinaigrette, or pressed summer sandwiches with hardboiled eggs and anchovies, which sounds and in the picture looks delicious. Scotch eggs – which, though fried are NOTHING like deep fried deviled eggs, though they’re probably even more lethal heart-wise. And there’s a link below to Eatingoutloud’s 10 unique uses for hardboiled eggs including hardboiled eggs Florentine (with spinach), Estonian nettle and egg soup, a wilding, hunter-gatherer kind of soup of stinging nettles that’s incredibly healthy, especially if you use free-range eggs, and Mexican papadzules. Our Depression-era ancestors would be proud.
Curried Deviled Eggs
Finely mash the yolks of a dozen hard-boiled eggs
Mix in:
2-3 tsp curry powder
1 tsp Worcestershire
2-3 tblsp sherry mustard
¼ cup Hellman’s mayo
salt and pepper
Stuff the halved whites with this, heaping it up. (You may have to discard a couple of whites to make them generously full.).
Scotch Eggs
These have been traditional bar food in Scottish pubs, though many pubs have gone upscale. But you can still get them in good ol’ Glasgow.
1 doz. hard-boiled eggs
2 pounds of mild bulk sausage
2 raw eggs, beaten, then left in a shallow bowl
fine breadcrumbs
about an inch of canola oil in a pan to fry them
Peel the eggs. Flatten out a small hamburger-sized mound of sausage and then wrap it completely around each egg to enclose. Cheaper sausage with more fillers is easier to do this with than the really expensive all-meat stuff. Roll the sausage-wrapped gently first in beaten egg then breadcrumbs. Fry until golden and crusty on all sides and the sausage is completely cooked. Serve with beer and have the cardiologist standing by.
The video below shows you how to make perfect hard-boiled eggs and follows it up with dyeing marbleized eggs for Easter.
Dyeing Easter Eggs link below instructs how to with commercial dyes and also lists some natural dye possibilities –something I did with my children one year, though their enthusiasm was a whole lot less than mine!
https://allrecipes.com/HowTo/Dyeing-Easter-Eggs/Detail.aspx
These two offer advice on food safety in dyeing and dyed eggs.
https://asktheexpert.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1120/~/are-easter-eggs-safe%3F
https://shelflifeadvice.com/content/are-eggs-dyed-easter-safe-eat
Hardboiled egg recipes:
https://www.food.com/recipe/paula-deen-hard-boiled-egg-casserole-105527
This one uses leftover ham and hard boiled Easter eggs
https://www.cooks.com/rec/doc/0,1616,154184-247197,00.html
Video on making deviled eggs
https://allrecipes.com/HowTo/Making-Ultimate-Deviled-Eggs-Video/Detail.aspx
Deviled egg recipes
https://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Salmon-Deviled-Eggs-with-Homemade-Mayonnaise/Detail.aspx
https://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Special-Deviled-Eggs/Detail.aspx
https://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Italian-Style-Deviled-Eggs/Detail.aspx
https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/neelys/fried-deviled-eggs-recipe/index.html
Pressed summer sandwich with hard boiled eggs and anchovies
https://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20356798_2,00.html
Egg Salad pitas with capers
https://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20356798_7,00.html
English Muffin egg pizzas
https://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20356798_6,00.html
Chicken Pan Bagnat with hardboiled eggs
https://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20356798_8,00.html
Chipotle Meatballs with egg filling
https://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20356798_3,00.html
https://www.eatingoutloud.com/2009/04/10-unique-uses-for-hard-boiled-eggs.html
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