Egg Salad Salad

“God, Friday, when I went home, I really wanted an egg salad sandwich. And I was just obsessing about it and I was like, ‘man, I’m gonna make one of those.’ So Saturday, I went out and got, like, a dozen eggs and I boiled them all and then I just spent … I don’t know, probably three hours … like three and a half hours making you know, the mayonnaise and onions and paprika and, you know, the accoutrement. And then by the time I was done I just really didn’t feel like eating it.
And I didn’t have any bread.”
-Steve Carrell as Andy in The Forty-Year-Old Virgin

For several years when I was in college, I was a vegetarian (I have a lot more to say about vegetarianism, but that’s a post in and of itself) and I ate a lot of egg salad sandwiches. Not long after I went gluten-free, I started just obsessing about egg salad sandwiches. The only problem was the GF bread I liked made great toast, but wasn’t very good straight out of the bag for sandwich making. I tried making egg salad sandwiches “protein style” wrapped up in lettuce leaves. While delicious, I don’t recommend this. Very messy. But it led me to this salad.

The other thing to know about this salad is: I hate mayonnaise. Yogurt would be an obvious substitute for mayo, but at the time I devised this salad I was off dairy, so that was a no-go. I imagine mashed avocado would also work instead of mayo. But I turned the mayotard into a dressing with equal parts lemon juice (or apple cider vinegar) and olive oil and not quite as much mustard (maybe a teaspoon).

Along with the obvious hard-boiled eggs, I add some combination of finely chopped raw onion, celery, pickles, and/or olives. Unfortunately last night when I made the salad pictured above, I had none of those things, so I went with scallions and tomatoes.

I ate this on a bed of chopped romaine, but my favorite green to top with egg salad is arugula. The bitter green and the bite of the raw onions will give you terrible breath, but is so good.