How Carla Hall Adds More Flavor To Egg Salad

It's easy to enjoy egg salad in a variety of ways. It can be eaten straight out of the bowl with a spoon, tossed into some lettuce wraps, sandwiched between two pieces of bread, and even served dip-style with some chips or crackers. Regardless of what you pair it with, egg salad is still made with two basic ingredients: eggs and mayonnaise. But that doesn't mean there isn't plenty of room to get creative. For instance, celebrity chef Carla Hall swears by adding chive mayonnaise to her egg salad for just the right flavor punch.

Mayonnaise almost always acts as the base dressing for egg salad, though you can substitute it for tangier, less-rich ingredients like Greek yogurt or sour cream. However, if you do plan to use mayonnaise, don't just stick to a boring, un-flavored mayo. Hall suggests kicking it up a notch with a homemade chive mayonnaise. Made from eggs and oil, the two main ingredients for mayonnaise, this condiment gets flavored with elements like lemon juice, Dijon, vinegar, and fresh chives for an aromatic kick.

If you're open to making your own mayonnaise, the chive route is sure to turn your egg salad into something so much better. Still, if you're not interested in putting forth the effort for the homemade version, or you feel funny about eating raw eggs, you can also make chive mayonnaise using the store-bought mayo you probably already have in your fridge. The emulsion of eggs and oil is done for you, but you can still use the same add-ons that chef Carla Hall suggests.

Add some Dijon mustard, lemon juice, and fresh chives to a bowl of mayonnaise (add everything to taste), seasoning it with salt along the way. For an even punchier flavor, Hall adds distilled vinegar to her original recipe, which gives a tangy acidity in addition to the lemon juice and mustard. Mix everything together, adding more or less of an ingredient depending on what you prefer, until you reach the perfect blend of fresh chives, rich mayo, and tangy aftertaste. From there, make the egg salad the same way you would with regular mayonnaise. Start by adding a little bit, then incorporate more until you reach the salad's desired texture. You can let it sit in the fridge for a while to let the flavors blend even more or dig in right away.