Alton Brown Raises The Bar On A Classic Egg Dish With A Little Bacon

If you've been on Instagram for longer than about 10 minutes, then you know that many cooks rely on bacon to make their recipes better. Just look at all the #bacon posts on the social media site, and you'll know it's the truth right down in your bacon-lovin' bones. And according to the Instagram account of one of the most famous food scientists of all time, Alton Brown, the cured breakfast meat is an easy way to upgrade classic egg salad.

The smoky bacon in his egg salad recipe melds well with all of the other ingredients in the dish, like chopped red onion, chives, and a burst of freshness from a couple of squeezes of lemon juice. Of course, all those flavors practically float around in a cloud of mayo'd deliciousness that holds each flavor in balance with the others, and quite nicely, too.

Fans of the celeb chef were practically champing at the bit to get a taste of his porky flavor bomb du jour. If the thought of this pork-and-eggs masterpiece makes you champ at the bit, too, you'll want to make note of Brown's favorite cooking techniques when you make your own bacon and egg salad at home.

When cooking with eggs in the past, Alton Brown has recommended starting with fresh hard-boiled eggs, (via YouTube) though hard-boiled is a bit of a misnomer here. He doesn't boil them. Instead, he cooks his eggs in a steam basket, which is immersed in an inch or so of water. The lid is placed on it after the water starts to bubble. It's a 12-minute cook for the eggs, followed by an arctic plunge — aka a bowl filled with ice cubes and water — for five minutes. 

By the time they've cooled, the eggs should be plenty crackable and ready to be sliced and then flavored up with lots of bacon fat and chunky little porky bits. When you start with better raw materials, like eggs, the end results tend to be better. And for this recipe, you'll want the freshest eggs, which contain more moisture and have a more fragile membrane. This translates into softer eggs that are also easier to peel. 

As for the bacon, Brown recommends four slices for the six eggs that his recipe calls for. It goes into a frying pan on the stove for 10 minutes. He does pull some of the grease off the bacon by dabbing it with some paper towels. However, since bacon fat plays a big role in his egg salad recipe, Brown reserves some of the grease in the pan to pour on the egg mixture later.

On his Instagram page, the celebrity chef recommended topping a piece of toast with his bacon'd egg salad. Treat yourself some extra flavor by slathering the toast with a spot of the best butter you can find. This egg salad recipe is a shoo-in for breakfast, given that everything — eggs, bacon, and toast — are all in one bite. However, its uses don't end there. It'd taste great in a breakfast burrito stuffed with some crispy potatoes, melted cheese, and roasted veggies, too.

Of course, it doesn't have to be a breakfast food at all. With the cornucopia of flavors in this egg salad, it's worth experimenting with bacon-and-egg-infused potato or tuna salads. The flavors of both of those dishes practically explode when the fatty umami taste of bacon and eggs gets mixed into the equation.

Finally, this is such a satisfying way to enjoy egg salad that no one would blame you if you don't want to wait for the toast to cook. Eating your own version of the celeb chef's bacon and egg salad over lettuce as part of a homemade deli platter while the ingredients are still slightly warm is completely and utterly encouraged, too.