Recipe: Healthy Egg Salad (That Actually Tastes Amazing)

By the way, if you are skipping the Easter egg decorating fun because you don’t want to use toxic Easter egg dye, there are plenty of ways to color Easter eggs naturally! Fresh beet juice and cheap red wine make the perfect hue of pink. Matcha green tea will give you lovely colored green eggs. Cranberry juice makes pretty purple-ish eggs. Frozen blueberry juice makes blue. The ideas are endless! You just want to be sure to add vinegar or lemon juice to the dye bath for richer, deeper egg coloring.

 

But back to the healthy egg salad.

Making healthy egg salad requires just two simple guidelines:

1. Use pastured eggs.
2. Do not use store-bought mayo or store-bought mayo substitutes (such as Vegenaise)

For the record, pastured eggs are not at all the same as the ones marketed “free range”, “vegetarian”, “organic”, etc. Read more about what separates pastured eggs HERE.

As for the mayo and mayo substitutes, to date, I cannot recommend one single mayo or mayo substitute brand on the market. The classic mayo brands (such as Hellman’s) all use highly refined eggs that have been pasteurized (note: pasteurization is a refinement process that destroys bacteria but also destroys nutrients and totally alters the molecular structure of the egg.) However, there is no way a mayonnaise made with eggs can sit unrefrigerated on a store shelf for months—or years!!—without being pasteurized. But that’s exactly the problem with refined foods. Pasteurization is a refinement process that destroys bacteria and extends shelf life, but it also destroys the integrity and intrinsic nutritional composition of the egg. So there is simply no way to make a healthy egg salad using store-bought mayo of any type that includes eggs on the list of ingredients.

What about store-bought mayo substitutes that are egg free? I don’t recommend those either because every single one I have looked at is made with highly refined and pro-inflammatory omega-6 rich oils (including Vegenaise). If you have our Clean Cuisine book then you know all of the reasons to avoid refined oils.

So then, how do you go about making a healthy egg salad recipe (that actually tastes good!!) without using a store-bought mayo or store-bought mayo substitute? If you do a quick Google search you will see the most popular mayo substitutes are avocado, silken tofu, sour cream or yogurt. The avocado tastes the best but of course it turns your egg salad green, sour cream is an empty calorie and pro-inflammatory ingredient that I would not suggest using and the other two just taste pretty mediocre. But, believe it or not, hummus works as an amazing mayo substitute. Healthy store-bought hummus is easy to find these days too, just look for a brand made with tahini and or extra virgin olive oil.

You can substitute hummus in a 1:1 ratio for any recipe that calls for mayo, which means you can turn just about any conventional egg salad recipe you find into a healthy egg salad (assuming of course you use pastured eggs!).

However, for the healthy egg salad recipe below, I used my own homemade mayo. It is entirely possible to make healthy homemade mayo using eggs, but conventional mayo recipes call for raw eggs, which I am always just way too nervous to use. My homemade mayo is actually not only egg-free, but also oil-free. However, I promise it tastes amazing. Plus it really is a lot safer than making a mayo with raw eggs, especially if you will be serving your egg salad to small children or anyone with a compromised immune system.

Of course I also realize time is often of the essence, so if you don’t have the spare time to make the homemade mayo for the healthy egg salad recipe below, simply substitute with a store-bought hummus made with tahini and/ or olive oil.