26 Inventive Weeknight Recipes with Hard-Boiled Eggs
Classic egg salad sandwiches to flavorful curries, plus answers to your egg-cellent questions
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If you have hard-boiled eggs — or a few minutes to cook them — you therefore have dinner, lunch, and of course, breakfast. And while hard-cooked eggs dipped in salt and black pepper are fine indeed, add a few more ingredients, and so many possibilities open up. Think of those messy and much-loved recipes for hard-boiled eggs with mayonnaise (egg salad! deviled eggs!). Imagine steamy bowls of ramen topped with tofu and wedges of hard-boiled eggs, or a platter of asparagus showered with crispy bacon and chopped eggs. Then there are crusty Tunisian sandwiches with sliced eggs and a smear of fiery harissa. Is there a more versatile ingredient than eggs?
Questions on hard-boiled eggs, answered
The best methods to hard-boil eggs
Hard-boiled egg recipes for breakfast
Hard-boiled egg sandwich recipes
Salad recipes with hard-boiled eggs
Noodle and pasta salad recipes with hard-boiled eggs
Questions on hard-boiled eggs, answered
Before we dive into recipes with hard-boiled eggs in them, let’s cover a few of the egg-cellent questions you may have.
How long do hard-boiled eggs last in the refrigerator? The USDA recommends using hard-boiled eggs within 1 week after cooking. This means you can easily cook enough so you can plan on recipes with hard-boiled eggs leftovers.
Can you freeze hard-boiled eggs? No. While the yolks on their own can be frozen up to 3 months, the whites get rubbery, so you shouldn’t freeze whole hard-boiled eggs.
How to store hard-boiled eggs. You can store hard-boiled eggs peeled or unpeeled in an airtight container in the refrigerator up to 1 week.
How long can hard-boiled eggs sit out? Don’t let hard-boiled eggs stand at room temperature for more than two hours after cooking or serving.
How to tell if hard-boiled eggs are bad? While eggs in the shell may still seem fine, if you crack them open and they smell off, you shouldn’t eat them.
The best methods to hard-boil eggs
It turns out there isn’t just one best way! Each of the following recipes make a good claim for “perfect,” and you may want to try all three ways to see which works best for you.
Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs by Ashlee Marie
Ashlee Marie shares a couple of important tips: Start with cold water, and use older eggs for shells that peel more easily. (There’s more air and a bit less liquid inside older eggs, meaning the shell isn’t pressed so tightly against the inside.)
Serious Eats takes the opposite approach: They claim that starting the eggs in boiling water rather than cold keeps the whites from sticking to the shells. Using a specific amount of water and timing the eggs exactly help reduce cooking variables. Julie Harrington feels that hard-boiled eggs cooked with the extra high heat of the pressure cooker peel the most easily; plus, the cook time is only 5 minutes.
Hard-boiled egg recipes for breakfast
If you make a big batch of hard-boiled eggs on the weekend, you’ll pay your way forward to a jump-start on weekday breakfasts that are far more interesting than the standard plain egg.
Breakfast Egg Salad by Bakers Royale
Imagine open-face egg salad sandwiches made healthier with whole-grain bread and half Greek yogurt instead of all mayo. In keeping with the breakfast theme, though, you still get your bacon.
Leftover cooked farro, steel-cut oats, or quinoa — plus leftover hard-boiled eggs — make Savory Breakfast Bowls go together in a snap. You’ll need a little more time to simmer chickpeas, bell pepper, and kale for Tunisian Breakfast Soup, which is served with eggs and toast, but the earthy flavors combined with salty capers and spicy harissa are worth it.
Three ways to devil an egg
Of all the recipes using hard-boiled eggs, the creamy deviled mash-up of mayonnaise and egg yolks stuffed back into the whites must be one of the easiest and most popular.
Mix a handful of ingredients with egg yolks, spoon them back into the egg whites, and repeat weekly. Chopped chives add a spark of color on top. These classic deviled eggs are so simple and delicious, you’ll wonder why you haven’t been making them more often.
Want to take your deviled eggs in a slightly different direction? Greek deviled eggs are here for you. These tasty bites get a lift from feta, mint, and black olives. The last take on deviled eggs adds oomph with smoked paprika and chili powder.
Hard-boiled egg sandwich recipes
Building a sandwich around hard-boiled eggs means that a filling and delicious lunch — or casual dinner — is just minutes away.
Classic Egg Salad by Once Upon A Chef
This egg salad recipe from Once Upon a Chef delivers on its title: nothing fancy, just a solid, classic, and tasty standby. That little bit of crunch from the celery contrasts with the richness of the creamy egg and mayonnaise to create a perfect balance of flavor and texture. One of the best parts: You may already have all the ingredients on hand.
Maybe you’re looking for hard-boiled egg recipes without mayo, and if that’s the case, why not try mashing them with avocado for a filling that’s both indulgent and healthy? The next two recipes feature canned tuna and hard-boiled eggs with a little olive oil to keep things moist. One includes big flavors of spicy harissa and salty preserved lemons, while the other goes piquant with quick-pickled onions.
Salad recipes with hard-boiled eggs
Whether you’re making a main-dish salad or a simple side salad, if you include eggs, the salad will feel both special and generous.
BLT Cobb Salad by Life Made Simple
One of the world’s most-loved salads, the Cobb debuted at the Hollywood Brown Derby restaurant in 1937, possibly as an inventive way to serve leftovers over greens. It’s still a brilliant idea. Toppings for the crunchy lettuces run the gamut as in this version, from classic (bacon, tomato, hard-boiled eggs, and cooked chicken) to modern (crunchy sunflower seeds).
Two more options let you make a meal out of salad with eggs: a Cobb that adds creamy avocado, blue cheese crumbles, and blue cheese or ranch dressing to the mix, and a gorgeous composed Niçoise with salmon instead of the usual tuna.
The next recipes, for side salads with hard-boiled eggs, range from a sophisticated combination of fresh herbs, crunchy celery, and radishes with briny anchovies, to a craveable asparagus salad with lots of salty bacon. Then there’s classic potato with five eggs for flavor and texture, plus chopped celery and a celery seed, mustard, and mayo dressing.
Noodle and pasta salad recipes with hard-boiled eggs
Starchy noodles plus tender hard-cooked eggs equals comfort food at its best. See how the concept plays out with two recipes for Asian noodles and two for pasta salad.
4 Ingredient Tofu Miso Ramen by Fuss Free Cooking
You most definitely want to include the optional hard-boiled eggs to make this one more substantial, but still, a five-ingredient recipe that takes only 15 minutes? No problem. A tablespoon of miso paste adds surprising depth to packaged ramen noodles.
If you’ve tried pad Thai, you’ll get the idea for kway teow, a stir-fried noodle dish that’s popular in Malaysia and Singapore. The recipe calls for ketjap manis, a sweet, syrupy soy sauce, but if you don’t have it, just sub in a little extra regular soy sauce and a little sugar.
The next recipe takes all the flavor from deviled eggs and rolls them into a pasta salad recipe. Dried dill and a sour cream dressing set the salad apart, along with — of course — a bunch of hard boiled eggs. Along the same theme, Tuna Nicoise Pasta takes the flavors you love in a Nicoise salad, including plenty of briny capers, and combines them with pasta for a family-friendly dish.
Curried eggs
A taste of the exotic is as close as your spice cabinet, and takes very little effort. Each of these curry sauces for hard-boiled eggs is a bit different, so choose what you’re in the mood for, or go with what ingredients you have on hand.
Quick Spiced Egg Curry by The Tiffin Box
Plenty of earthy and citrusy flavored ground coriander, plus cumin, turmeric, and cayenne, season the sauce made with half-and-half or coconut milk, canned tomatoes, garlic, and fresh ginger. Add the hard-boiled eggs at the end, and then serve with basmatic rice or naan.
For the South Indian Spicy Egg Curry you’ll make slits in whole hard-boiled eggs, then pan-roast the eggs with spices so the flavors will penetrate. Flavors here are deeper than in the first recipe, with sweet cinnamon, complex garam masala, and generous turmeric. The last egg curry is seasoned similarly to the first, but uses water for a very easy and dairy-free sauce.
Recipes for quarantine cooking
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