Ingredients You Should Be Adding To Your Egg Salad

When it comes to traditional American eats, egg salad is a staple. Complete with hard-boiled eggs, mayo, and various yummy ingredients, egg salad is a classic go-to lunch menu option. Still, even the classics can get a bit drab, especially if this specific dish is part of your weekly — or daily — rotation. Thankfully, there are plenty of easy ways to amp up this traditional meal and turn it into something marvelous. In this post, we're illuminating the ways you can elevate egg salad using fun and interesting add-ins.

From unexpected condiments to meaty extras, there's something for everyone on the upcoming list. Also, be sure to take note of any special instructions regarding each ingredient, as a few of them might require changes to your standard egg salad recipe to help flavors meld. Join us as we uncover the delicious ingredients you should consider the next time you're whipping up an egg salad.

It's true, folks — egg salad isn't just for lunch anymore. Celebrity chefs have come up with some of the best (and worst) egg salad recipes, but we've got to admit, we're impressed with Alton Brown's take. He recommends adding the salty savor of crispy bacon to your egg salad for a fun twist that can even be enjoyed for breakfast. By combining chopped hard-boiled egg, mayo, red onion, hot sauce, and a few other ingredients, you end up with a hearty morning dish that you can serve over toast.

As far as what kind of bacon to add to your egg salad, the choice is entirely yours. Thick and robust slices will likely give your egg salad a chewier texture, while thinner bacon slices will cook up crispy and lend a wonderful umami crunch. You can also opt to add bacon that comes flavored, like candied bacon, hickory smoked, and applewood. Each will infuse your egg salad with a slightly different taste, making for a delicious final dish that's both excitingly new and warmly familiar. Simply cook, chop, and add cooled bacon to your next egg salad ingredients to enjoy its benefits.

Potatoes in egg salad? Yep, it's a thing. Potatoes can easily be added to egg salad along with a few other basic ingredients. Start by boiling and peeling your eggs. Then, place your potatoes in water before draining them and adding chicken stock. Grate in onions along with seasonings and a few condiments as directed in the recipe. Chop the eggs and add them in. This particular egg salad recipe works well as a side dish, so feel free to enjoy this versatile option alongside a Sunday ham or over soft bread.

Since adding potatoes to egg salad is an uncommon addition, we took to Reddit to see how people felt about it. Most seem fairly fond of the idea, with commenters on one thread claiming it's a great way to morph egg salad into a potato salad that can be served alongside BBQ and an array of dishes. It may seem odd, but adding potatoes to egg salad makes the dish so much more versatile and just as delicious.

Fried eggs in egg salad might sound foreign to American ears, but when it comes to Thai cuisine, it's a very common ingredient. Pok Pok Chef Andy Ricker's deceptively simple fried egg salad (otherwise known as Yam Khai Dao) is Thailand's rendition of the dish, though it may not quite be the "egg salad" you'd expect. There's no mayo, mustard, or relish in this Thai take, but don't worry; its other flavorful and nutritious ingredients make up for that.

To make Yam Khai Dao fried egg salad, start by frying your eggs in oil over high heat. Expect lots of popping and splattering when adding your eggs to the oil — it's normal and part of the process. Once golden brown, allow the oil on the eggs to drain before cutting them into quarters. From there, combine a mixture of lime juice, fish sauce, garlic, chilies, and a few other yummy ingredients over stovetop until nice and warm. To a wok, add your quartered fried eggs along with tasty veggies like onions, carrots, cilantro, and Chinese celery. Pour your warmed sauce over the ingredients. Hey, it might not be what you're used to, but it's an awesome way to get in a hefty serving of protein and veggies.

Scallions, otherwise known as green or spring onions, are a milder version of most onion types and fit well into the traditional egg salad scene. These onions come looking like sticks rather than the bulbous shape you might be used to and have white tips at the base along with vibrant green stalks. Scallions are easily stored, wrapped in a damp paper towel, and chilled in an airtight container or bag. According to Turkish tradition, scallions are often added to egg salad, making for yet another great egg salad variation from around the world.

Adding green onions to your egg salad is just about as easy as you'd imagine. Doing it the Turkish way, you'd throw them in alongside hard-boiled egg, parsley, pepper flakes, olive oil, and salt. You are welcome to jazz up the rest of the dish any way you like. You'll likely love the crunchy textural contrast crisp scallions bring along with their freshly pleasant flavor.

Worcestershire sauce has many uses, but you'll rarely find it in egg salad recipes. Even so, we've seen a few people incorporate this surprising ingredient into the egg dish, including celebrity chef Geoffrey Zakarian. In case you don't know, Worcestershire sauce is a thin, deeply brown liquid that contains vinegar, molasses, and anchovies and could be quite the potent choice for a humble egg salad. It has a bold, deep, and slightly sweet taste, giving it a unique edge over other condiments, especially when used in this type of dish.

When adding Worcestershire sauce to egg salad, we'd recommend taking it easy, tasting as you go. Also, consider following a recipe when attempting to pull it off since the flavor of Worcestershire sauce might play along better with some ingredients than others. Only about a teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce is needed to deepen the flavor of your egg salad, along with the merriment of a couple of other interesting ingredients like scallions and red wine vinegar. It might not cater to all taste buds, but it's certainly worth a shot.

Apple cider vinegar isn't an ingredient you'd normally see added to egg salad, but it is definitely an option worth exploring. Apple cider vinegar, also referred to as "ACV," is a type of vinegar derived from apples. It is caramel brown in color and has a distinctly sweet taste compared to other vinegar types.

When added to egg salad, apple cider vinegar imparts mild tanginess, and can be used in more than one way. The first way is to simply combine apple cider vinegar with olive oil before drizzling it over roughly chopped boiled egg. Though simple, it provides an easy way to whip up egg salad with no mayo. Missing the creamy decadence here? No problem. You can still maintain the smooth essence of egg salad by keeping the mayo and adding apple cider vinegar for unexpected tang. If you're looking for a recipe, this creamy egg salad recipe will no doubt provide delicious results. Just be sure not to go overboard with the ACV; a single teaspoon of vinegar to every ½ cup of mayo should do the trick.

Another egg salad variation from around the world is this unique Greek spin that includes olives. As you may know, traditional Greek salads come speckled with lots of tasty ingredients, with kalamata olives being one of them. These darkly hued additions provide a salty umami punch that is indeed a signature part of Greek salad cuisine. Unsurprisingly, Greek egg salad is quite similar, with the likes of feta, tomato, red onion, and olives to turn up the volume on egg salad flavor. Not only do olives provide a tasty boost, but they also supply beefy texture and beautiful color contrast against the eggs and their yolks.

To bring a Greek egg salad to life, combine cucumbers, feta cheese, red onions, olives, and chopped hard-boiled eggs. Add to it a mixture of Greek yogurt and red wine, along with a few herbs and spices. The result is a light and flavorful egg salad with all the zest of traditional Greek flavor. Genius!

We're recommending yet another unique addition from egg salad dishes around the world, only this time, we're honing in on a replacement for your mayo in the form of cream cheese. That's right. There are some people out there who take the decadent creaminess of using mayo to the next level by combining — or even totally replacing — it with the richness of cream cheese. We extracted this tip from Polish cuisine, where this unique ingredient adds a creamy spin on egg salad.

Pasta jajeczna is a classic egg salad recipe in Poland that involves very few ingredients, with only eggs, cream cheese, and chives as the base. Don't hesitate to douse your Polish creation with a little onion and parsley or even a bit of butter (a tablespoon of softened butter will do) to further enhance its taste and spreadability. This egg salad ingredient might be rich and unexpected but can hit the spot when wanting to sample something out of the ordinary.

We've already covered cream cheese as a worthy way to add rich indulgence to your egg salad, but what if we told you sour cream can work in much the same way? You can go the Hungarian route and replace all your mayo with this option if you dare, but we'd advise that you only do so if you really love the taste of sour cream. If you do choose this option, be sure to combine it with a little butter, as this will make spreading it much easier when adding to bread or toast.

If you aren't feeling that ostentatious, consider a more modest approach to sour cream in egg salad by adding just a couple of tablespoons of the sour cream alongside the mayo. Using this ingredient will provide a tangier bite while further enhancing its creaminess. This mayo and sour cream combination pairs wonderfully with chopped chives, parsley, Dijon, and salt and pepper.

Avocado works excellently when looking to add nutrients and volume to egg salad, and you know if it's part of Martha Stewart's favorite egg salad ingredients, it's got to be good. According to Martha, mashing half an avocado with half of a roughly chopped hard-boiled egg is a perfect way to add texture and flavor to an egg salad dish. Throw in a few tablespoons of light mayonnaise, Dijon, lemon juice, and a sprinkle of salt and pepper before smearing the concoction over lettuce or soft bread. You're welcome.

Now, if Martha's recipe seems a bit too far off base for you, be sure to check out this simple egg salad with avocado recipe, instead. It only requires three hard-boiled eggs, mayo, avocado, lime, and a little salt to accomplish an incredibly tasty yet ridiculously easy-to-throw-together meal in minutes. How much of the avocado you use will be up to your taste buds to decide, so feel free to add a little more (or less) than suggested in the recipe in accordance with your preference.

Adding extra meat, particularly in the form of ham, can add a savory and salty contrast that can make your egg salad more filling — and certainly more scrumptious. We gleaned this tip from Celebrity Chef Sunny Anderson, and we think it is one of the best celebrity chef egg salad ideas out there. If you want to go Chef Anderson's route, add your cubed ham to chopped boiled eggs, along with hot red cherry pepper slices, scallion, red onions, and — gasp — a smidge of sriracha.

Of course, you don't have to go all the way with Sunny's ingredients if you don't want to. There are plenty of traditional yet delicious ways to incorporate ham into your egg salad without switching up the classic recipe too much. In fact, we're willing to bet that tossing a handful or two of diced ham pieces would work beautifully in an old-fashioned egg salad dish without changing or altering anything else — but that's just our guess. All in all, our hats are off to Chef Anderson for this suggestion — ham in egg salad is one of our new favorite egg salad upgrades.

We know what you're thinking: cheese in egg salad? Yep, and we're not taking it back. Cheese is usually found in variations of egg salad that differ significantly from the standard American version, like the Greek egg salad we mentioned earlier. As you know by now, Greek egg salads incorporate feta into the mix, but other types of egg salad can benefit from the creamy flavors of cheese, as well.

As a matter of fact, you can easily upgrade a classic egg and cheese recipe by adding in shredded cheddar. How? Simply cook up a few hard-boiled eggs, peel and chop them, douse them in pickle relish, mayo, and mustard, along with a bit of salt and pepper. Add as much shredded cheddar cheese as you like, though the exact amount of cheese you'll need to use will depend on the amount of egg salad you make. Other cheese types can also be included in egg salad, but you'll need to experiment with different flavors to find out which pair best with your go-to egg salad recipe.

Like sour cream, Greek yogurt is another way to dress egg salad, and it provides a different essence than typical mayonnaise. Though similar to sour cream, Greek yogurt tends to be thicker and tangier, meaning you'll need to account for its texture and taste when swapped in for mayo. If you aren't quite ready for that kind of flavor, we understand — simply use half the mayo and combine it with half Greek yogurt to make your egg salad more palatable.

As for the benefits of using Greek yogurt in egg salad, with less fat to worry about and added protein, Greek yogurt can prove a lighter addition to an egg salad recipe, which is perfect for those looking to cut back on calories. With that said, be sure to select a Greek yogurt variety that doesn't contain flavorings or sugar; after all, adding vanilla Greek yogurt would be quite the recipe fail, wouldn't it?

Yes, you can totally put flower buds in egg salad and have it still taste amazing. Wondering what capers are? No worries, we've got you covered. Capers are little flower buds that come from caper bushes — hence the name. They're often tiny and dark green and pack lots of briny flavor. You can find capers in jars, like these 365 by Whole Foods Market organic capers, making them easy to store and convenient to toss in a recipe whenever you need to. As for the taste, expect vinegary flavor with plenty of salt and a slightly herbal savor.

Most suggest using capers to "accessorize" salads and entrées, which is exactly how we'd recommend using them for egg salad — just a bit will do the trick. Like with many other egg salad ingredients mentioned on this list, just how many capers you'll need for your egg salad will depend on the amount you're making, but in general, 2 tablespoons will do the trick.