The Best Way to Chop Eggs for Egg Salad

Egg salad is like the Little Black Dress of the culinary world. When the cupboards are bare and you think there is nothing to eat, you can always fix egg salad. If you need to prepare a light snack for yourself or want to dial up an easy and inexpensive crowd-pleasing appetizer, egg salad is the way to go. As much as we agree that we all love egg salad, however, differences arise not only in the ingredients (purists insist on the traditional elements of mayonnaise, mustard, relish, etc., while the more adventurous go yolk-less and add avocado) but also in, believe it or not, how the egg should be chopped. Surprised? You shouldn't be. We argue, quite passionately, over putting sugar in cornbread and baking soda in sweet tea. Listen in on some of the ways we dig into a boiled egg and discover the absolute best and easiest way to chop an egg for egg salad.

Many of us have purchased a handy egg slicer - inexpensive, lightweight, with thin, stainless steel wires. Like a guillotine, with one swift movement your egg is sliced into pretty, uniform pieces, perfect for garnishing main-dish salads. This is a nice little device for sure, if you can find it – stashed in the very back of your "tool and gadget" drawer, by the time you rummage around and find it you could have cut a dozen eggs with a sharp kitchen knife.

If you don't want to buy an extra utensil when something you already have can do the trick, consider the potato masher, which "chops" boiled eggs into perfect, uniform bits in a matter of seconds. Have you ever used your pastry cutter (a.k.a. dough blender)? Whether you use this or the potato masher, just put your peeled, boiled eggs in a large bowl and get to chopping. The Pioneer Woman even uses a cooling rack to chop eggs. But seriously, you don't need any of these gadgets to chop eggs when the best method is to simply use your hands.

Recipe developer and cookbook author Sheri Castle suggests that "for a salad with hearty texture that won't turn gummy or pasty, use your hands to crumble the eggs instead of chopping the whites and mashing the yolks with a fork." You will, of course, want to wait until the boiled eggs are cool enough to handle, but think of it. You can peel and crumble the eggs all at the same time. Brilliant, right? We think so. So, save the hacks for another project and don't waste time hunting in the kitchen for a specialty gadget when you already have the perfect tool for making egg salad.