Healthy Egg Salad
Looking for a healthy egg salad recipe that you can enjoy through the week? I’ve got you covered! This healthy egg salad recipe is easy to make and delicious. Perfect for weekly meal prep or a quick and easy lunch. I can guarantee, you’re going to love this recipe.
Ingredients Needed to Make Egg Salad
Eggs – You’ll need 8 hard boiled eggs for this recipe. Peel the shell and separate the yolks from the whites. It might sound like a lot, but these 8 eggs go a long way when they’re chopped and mixed. For the prefect hard-boiled eggs, you can either use a specialized egg cooker, or bring them to room temperature, pop them in a pan of boiling water with a little bit of salt, set a timer for 9 minutes before draining.
If you don’t have time to bring your eggs to room temperature before boiling, carefully put them into room temperature water with a little bit of salt and set a timer for 12 minutes. Bring the pan to a boil immediately. Once your eggs have cooled off enough to peel, they’ve bathed and steamed long enough to become perfectly hard-boiled.
Dressing – For this recipe, you’ll need Greek yogurt, fresh squeezed lemon juice and Dijon mustard. If you’re not used to using yogurt in dressings, I recommend a plain Greek yogurt brand that’s low in added sugar. Trust the process: it will taste like a smooth, sweetened sour cream, making it a delicious addition to this egg salad.
Herbs / Vegetables – This recipe is jam packed with fresh herbs and vegetables. You’ll need freshly chopped chives, minced shallots, chopped dill, minced jalapeno, and chopped celery. Be sure to keep everything close to the same size so you do not end up with a huge bite of one specific item. Seasoning – Season this recipe with salt and cracked black pepper. If you’re feeling a little adventurous and love a smokey, spicy zing, season with a little bit of paprika after plating, right before serving. This also makes a great colorful garnish for presentation. When it comes right down to it, however, I find that simple does it better when mixing seasonings into the egg salad itself. A little bit of salt and pepper and you’ll bring out all the complex flavors of the dish that all those fresh ingredients add.
How to Make A Healthier Egg Salad
Hard boil your eggs. Peel them and separate the yolks from the whites.
Add the yolks to a mixing bowl and combine them with Greek yogurt, Dijon mustard and fresh squeezed lemon juice. Whisk until creamy.
Next, add the freshly chopped celery, minced shallots, minced jalapeno, chopped dill, and finely chopped chives.
Then, roughly chop the egg whites and add them to the bowl.
Season everything with salt and cracked black pepper.
Stir until well combined.
Serve with toast, avocado and pickled radish.
Is Egg Salad Healthier for a Diet?
Egg salad is a great choice for a healthy diet because you are getting a lot of excellent nutrients, vitamins, and minerals from all the fresh ingredients. Plus, eggs are surprising good for you, especially in hard-boiled form.
Even better, this egg salad takes less than an hour to make – and most of that is in boiling the eggs. The rest is easy-peasy, and it lasts in the fridge for several days allowing you to munch on it whenever you need a boost of protein.
Unfortunately, egg salad does get a bad rep when it comes to dieting because most egg salad is made with egregious amounts of mayonnaise. Standard storebought mayo is incredibly fattening because it has so many calories and cholesterol. It is, after all, mostly oil and preservatives.
Why Greek Yogurt Instead of Mayonnaise in this Egg Salad Recipe?
As we touched on briefly above, mayonnaise is not the best ingredient for your healthy and it can cause you to stray too far from a diet. Mayo will also leave you feeling heavy and unsatisfied in most cases as its providing you with too much of the wrong kind of fats compared to what your body needs.
Plus, you’ll find that once you make the switch to unsweetened, plain Greek yogurt for a dressing or filling, you’ll be hooked. Greek yogurt offers a lighter and more complex flavor that mayo could never hope to achieve.
Overall, you’ll find that the flavor of Greek yogurt is similar to that of mayonnaise, but it is lighter, cleaner, and has just a little tang to it which allows other ingredients’ flavors to shine through much better. If the yogurt is too thick, add just a splash of water and mix thoroughly.
With this substitution, you can say goodbye to a flawed diet and hello to a healthy diet that just got a lot tastier than ever before. If you ask me, the point of food is to enjoy it thoroughly, and I’ve gotten to where I don’t care much for regular mayonnaise now that I know how easy and delicious substituting Greek yogurt can be. And trust me: I didn’t think it would work either when I first tried it.
Storage
Storing this healthy egg salad is easy, and it lasts for a long time in the fridge. Make sure to store it in a covered container in the refrigerator for up to three to four days. Egg salad unfortunately does not freeze well, but in my experience, it doesn’t need to be. This dish is often the first to go at family events, and its easily my most popularly requested dish from friends.
How to Serve These Eggs
If you’re looking for an excuse to serve one dish in several different ways, then egg salad should be your recipe of choice. With such a versatile consistency and delicious flavor that complements just about anything it’s served on, it’s surprising that more people aren’t in the habit of making egg salad a part of their staple diet.
There is hardly a limit to how creative you can be with egg salad in presentation or serving options. Serve in single-portion bowls, in ramekins, on another food item, or as a delicate highlight to any other dish at dinnertime. Presentation is key, and because of the consistency, you can even shape it with a rice paddle or spatula and make it look twice as appetizing as it already did.
Rich in B12, choline, iron, and protein, egg salad has a lot of nutritional benefit. Even better, it makes a perfect on-the-go snack to pack with you, just be sure to include a handful of crackers or some mini naan bread or pita pockets to scoop it out of the travel container.
You can enjoy this egg salad over toast, in a wrap, or with crackers.
Typically, egg salad is served cold or at room temperature, but few people explore the warm goodness that egg salad can bring to the table as well. If you’re looking for a cheesy treat, find your bread of choice – I personally prefer a fresh, artisan three-ingredient bread from a local bakery – and slice it thinly. Toast in the toaster or toaster oven and spread egg salad over the top, along with a light amount of shredded cheese. Pop this into the toaster oven to warm it all up and melt the cheese. If you love a little extra zing, garnish with pickled beets or sliced green olives.
My favorite part of egg salad is serving it with edible garnishes. Add avocado over the top, spritzed with lemon or lime juice to prevent it from oxidizing and turning brown. Pickled radish also makes a delicious garnish that helps clear the palette after each bite.
Looking for more recipes?
Healthy Egg Salad
Ingredients
- 8 eggs, hard boiled, peeled
- ½ cup Greek yogurt
- 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
- 1-2 tablespoons lemon juice, fresh squeezed
- ½ cup celery, chopped small
- ¼ cup shallots, minced
- 2 tablespoons jalapeno, minced, remove veins and seeds
- 2 tablespoons chives, finely chopped
- 2 tablespoons dill, fresh dill chopped small
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon cracked black pepper
Equipment
- 1 pot to boil eggs
- 1 mixing bowl
Instructions
- Hard boil your eggs. Peel them and separate the yolks from the whites.
- Add the yolks to a mixing bowl and combine them with Greek yogurt, Dijon mustard and fresh squeezed lemon juice. Whisk until creamy.
- Next, add the freshly chopped celery, minced shallots, minced jalapeno, chopped dill, and finely chopped chives.
- Then, roughly chop the egg whites and add them to the bowl.
- Season with salt and cracked black pepper.
- Stir until well combined.
- Serve with toast, avocado and pickled radish.
2 Comments on “Healthy Egg Salad”
YUM! I’ve never been much of an egg salad fan but this just looked so good, I had to try it! It was sooo good! I followed the recipe exactly but had to substitute fresh dill with dried dill (since it was out of stock everywhere) and it was still super flavorful!
The jalapeño especially added so much flavor.
New fave lunch recipe!
I finally had a chance to make this after having it on my list for a couple weeks, and it was AWESOME! I usually love mayo but never loved tuna or egg salad, turns out Greek yogurt was the answer! I made a batch of the egg salad, and then I mixed in a packet of tuna the next day with the leftovers. Highly recommend this recipe and can’t wait to try the next one! Thanks!!