Kinzy’s Deviled Eggs
- 1/2 + 1/8 cup mayonnaise
- 2 tsp yellow mustard
- 2 tsp Dijon mustard
- 1/4 tsp white vinegar
- 13 eggs
- Black pepper, to taste
- Green olives, sliced (optional)
- Paprika (optional)
- Xanthan gum (not necessary, but recommended)
1- Bring pot of water to rapid boil, poke small hole in fat end of each egg, drop eggs into water and boil 13-15 minutes
2- Remove eggs from pan with slotted spoon and place gently into bowl of ice water to cool
3- Carefully crack and peel eggs, dip eggs in water to rinse off any small pieces of egg shells
4- Cut eggs in half lengthwise, cleaning knife off between each egg
5- Scoop cooked egg yolk out of egg white half and place yolks into bowl
6- Mix egg yolks until they are broken into pea sized or smaller pieces
7- Add 1/4 cup mayonnaise and 1 tsp of each mustard and mix
8- Add remaining mayonnaise, mustard, and vinegar and mix until smooth
9- If egg yolks are too runny too pipe, add xantham gum 1/8 tsp at a time and mix fully before adding more
10- Pipe eggs full with star tip
11- Garnish with sprinkle of paprika and sliced green olives
Ahh, deviled eggs. Truly the best hors d’oeuvres any time of the year. My husband goes feral for them, so much so that one year his grandma made him his own plate of deviled eggs for Thanksgiving. He is very lucky to have a wife that always makes an insurance egg (we’ll cover that later).
Deviled eggs are something I actually really enjoy making. They’re a pretty low stress food once you get the hang of them, and as long as you know the crowd you’re serving, people almost always enjoy them. I made my deviled eggs very similar to how my parents make them; down to the signature slice of green olive.
Honestly, I don’t know how common it is to add olives as a garnish on deviled eggs, but that’s how my parents have always made theirs. The Maddux side of my family has an affinity for olives, both black and green. My grandma always made sure to have plenty of both at every holiday meal. We’d all be standing in the kitchen, or maybe walking through, snagging a few olives before dinner was ready. It’s honestly such a staple in our family I can tell you who likes only black olives, who likes only green, and who likes both (I love both!). My son, who is almost 3.5 now, is on the spectrum and he is very particular with foods that he will eat. He also has a sensory processing disorder, which makes eating a lot of foods hard because he can’t stand the feeling on his hands, or the texture while eating. I can’t tell you how surprised we were when he started eating olives. A win for me, my little buddy to always share a can of olives with.
Let’s talk about one of the coolest kitchen gadgets I have. The Egg Piercer.
I have no doubt that in a time of rampant internet access and social media, you’ve seen your fair share of cooking “hack” videos. A shameful fact about myself is that I get so irritated watching these videos, because most of the time someone is doing something blatantly wrong, or making cooking way more complicated than it really needs to be. But several years ago, I saw a video of someone using a thumb tack to poke tiny holes in raw eggs before boiling them. Their claim was that this helps making the peeling easier. I have no idea what possessed me to try it, usually I’d just roll my eyes and move on. But it seemed fairly low-stakes, right? Just grab a thumb tack, give it a good clean, and poke some holes.
To my surprise, this is a “hack” sits upon a hill of which I am willing to die on. For years I kept a designated egg thumb tack in the kitchen drawer, and I used it every time I made deviled eggs. It wasn’t until last year that I was perusing on Amazon, looking for some kitchen thing that I happened upon a 2 pack of egg piercers. My mom got them for me for my birthday last year, and I cannot express to you how excited I was to use them.
Basically, it’s just a needle in a spring loaded base. The yellow part does turn to lock it, and the back has a magnet on it so you can store it on your fridge. This ol’ boy hasn’t failed me yet (sort of). The picture above shows the needle as I am pressing down on the yellow circle, and you can also see the tiny, tiny holes it leaves in the egg. You simply set the wider bottom of the egg onto the yellow circle, press the egg down, and pull back up. Voilá! You have a tiny little puncture in your egg.
The reason I say it sort of hasn’t failed me yet is because while I was starting to make this batch of deviled eggs, my son was sitting in the kitchen eating his lunch, and when I went to poke the hole in the egg (camera in one hand, egg in the other) I didn’t realize I hadn’t unlocked it and the egg exploded when I tried to press it down. I let out a brief scream of shock, which sent my son into a fit of full belly giggles. While cleaning up egg is a pain, hearing his laugh is truly the best thing in the world.
As it goes, I have a lot of strong opinions about a lot of things in the kitchen. One of my absolute biggest complaint is why there exists so many deviled egg trays that have an odd amount of slots. In my humble, and maybe not so professional opinion, any egg trays should only have 12 (for a half dozen eggs) or 24 (for a full dozen eggs). I don’t know anyone who is making any other amount. But I digress, this is to say that even though my wonderful deviled egg tray has 24 slots, I always and I mean always boil 13 eggs. We call this The Insurance Egg.
If you haven’t caught on yet, I am big into insurance items when it comes to cooking and baking. You gotta always have a game plan.
The Insurance Egg serves a few purposes.
1- It’s a back up in case of tragedy (I.E. cracking, exploding, dropping, miscutting, etc.)
2- Any egg turns out a little weird (you know, like when you cut them in half and the yolk is sitting so close to the side of the egg that there really isn’t a wall of egg whites to hold in the filling?)
3- It’s a tester egg to make sure your eggs are fully cooked
4- It’s my husbands snack, because he never wants to wait until whatever family meal we’re bringing the deviled eggs to, to actually eat the deviled eggs.
Truly, The Insurance Egg serves many glorious purposes. It’s never failed me to have an insurance egg.
Now that my egg rants are over- let’s talk about the actual recipe. The first thing I do when making deviled eggs is get the water boiling. I prefer to use a large metal stock pot, it just gives plenty of room to ensure all of the eggs are fully submerged. I fill it with water and turn it on high. While it is heating up, I will pierce my eggs, gather my ingredients, and prep my station.
When the water reaches a full rapid boil, I use a slotted spoon to gently put the eggs into the pan. This helps prevent any big cracks from just dropping them in. I will set a timer for 13 minutes. I do stir the eggs about half way through, this just helps the eggs cook more evenly. Some pans/stoves will have hotter spots, which can lead to some eggs being very overcooked; where they start to look green on the edges of the yolk.
While my timer is running, I will fill a large bowl full of ice and water. This is to put the eggs into once they are fully cooked to help cool them down faster, and prevent over cooking.
I also prefer to layer paper towels on my cutting board. This step isn’t necessary, but I think it makes cleanup go smoother.
When the timer goes off, I will reset it for 2 minutes. This is just so, if the eggs do have to cook a little longer, I know how long it’s been since the timer went off and I am not adding more time than necessary. I will use a slotted spoon to get an egg out, and immediately put it into the ice bath. I only let this egg cool for just a few seconds; long enough that I can hold the egg in my hand without being burnt. Then I crack, peel, and cut the egg to see how done it is.
In the case of this insurance egg, this egg is technically done and ready to eat hard boiled. However, I prefer to cook my eggs a little longer, just until that darker jelly-like spot in the middle goes away; I will explain why in just a minute. For this batch of deviled eggs, I let them cook the full 2 minutes on the second timer, cut the heat, and begin moving them all to the ice bath with a slotted spoon.
While the eggs are cooling in the ice bath, I use this time to dump out the boiling water and clean and put away my stock pot. Usually by then, the eggs have cooled enough to start handling.
For cracking the eggs, I give them a swift rap on the paper towel lined cutting board. You should end up with a good circular cracked area, as seen in the picture above. I will place the cracked area down onto the cutting board, place my palm flat on top, roll the egg away from me, and then roll it back with light pressure. You should hear the egg shell cracking as you do this. Be careful to ensure you’re not applying Hulk-like pressure which will damage the boiled egg. Then I use my thumb and pointer finger to pinch the round cracked spot and begin peeling from there. Rolling the egg to crack clear around it should make peeling much easier.
Here is the magical part about the egg piercer. When you’re boiling your eggs, you might see tiny little air bubbles coming out of the holes you poked in them. When you crack the eggs, you will see little jets of water shoot out of the egg. I took a video of me hitting the eggs on the cutting board and took a video still of it so you can see the little jet of water. How amazing! This is totally me guessing, but I think the tiny hole allows air to escape the inside of the egg, and water to fill it in. The boiling hot water immediately starts to cook the part of the egg it comes in contact with, leaving a tiny gap of water between the egg and the egg shell; making it easier to peel. In my experience, this usually also prevents getting an oddly shaped egg white from the air pocket in the eggs too. We love non-deformed deviled eggs!
We’ve been skipping back and forth a lot here; which is my fault. Even I didn’t know I had so much to say about hard boiled eggs. As I mentioned before, I like to add a few layers of paper towels onto my cutting board. The first reason is just to absorb water, the second reason is to collect the egg shells. As I am cracking my eggs, I like to put them in a second bowl of cold water (not the ice bath we used before, just a bowl of clean water) this helps rinse off any tiny bits of egg shell I might have missed. Then I will peel up the first layer of paper towels to collect all of the shells I have peeled off and throw that away. Once that’s done, I will remove the eggs from the cool water, and set them on the paper towels that are still left on my cutting board to absorb any water. In the second picture you can see all of the egg shells that were rinsed off. That is a LOT.
Once the eggs have essentially dripped dry, I will move the eggs one by one while peeling back the paper towels so I can cut them on a clean and mostly dry board.
Obviously, here we will be cutting the eggs in half lengthwise. I trust that you know this, yes? I am using a 4-1/2” Santoku Kitchenaid knife. This knife was a gift from my dad when I was in culinary school, after I told him one of the Chef’s recommended us to get one for our knife kits. Truly, this has turned into one of my most used knives. After each egg I cut in half, I scrape the side of the blade (being careful not to scrape the sharp edge) onto the side of my Kitchenaid bowl, and then I will wipe off the knife with a papertowel. This isn’t entirely necessary, but it does prevent getting a build up of yolk on the side of each egg half.
Now, do you remember when I said that The Insurance Egg is technically hard boiled, but I let my eggs cook for 2 minutes longer? This, this is why. The egg white half on the left side of this picture is the insurance egg. While that egg is technically hard boiled, and would absolutely work to make the deviled egg filling, the egg yolk is much sticker and is harder to separate from the egg white. The egg on the right side of the picture is an egg that cooked for 2 minutes longer. The yolks pretty much just fall ight out when they’re cooked to this point. It truly makes the process so much easier, and I think the eggs just turn out looking cleaner once they’re finished.
I like to keep toothpicks on hand for tasting the filling as I go, just stick the toothpick into the mix, try a little bit, and throw your toothpick away. That way I can tell if it needs more pepper and adjust.
Let’s talk about Xanthan Gum.
Xanthan gum is produce by fermenting a mix of sucrose and glucose. It is then extracted and then dried and milled into a fine power which you can see me pouring in the first picture above. Xanthan gum is a thickening agent that is used in all sorts of things from salad dressings, to toothpaste, and it’s even used in the oil industry.
If you are someone who constantly makes runny deviled eggs, I cannot assure you enough how worth it it is to spend the $7 on a bag. You truly only need a very small amount to thicken up deviled eggs; I am only using 1/8 tsp. Plus you can use it for pretty much anything in the kitchen. It will help emulsify your vinaigrettes, it can thicken up soups and sauces, it’s even great for gluten free baking.
When you’re making the filling for deviled eggs, you want it to be sturdy enough to hold its shape. A good way to test this is to scoop out a spoon full and let it plop back down into the rest of the mix in the bowl. If you can see it slowly spreading out and losing its shape, then your mix isn’t thick enough for piping. If it stays in the same shape as you dropped it in, it’s good to go. Alternatively, you can lift the whisk to your mixture up and see if the filling that is stuck to the whisk stays in place, or if it drips off.
When filling deviled eggs, I like to use a piping bag with a star tip. If you don’t have bags/tips, feel free to use a ziplock bag and cut the very tip of a corner off for a makeshift bag. Just a side note, if you’ve never tried the disposable pipping bags, these are perfect for deviled eggs. I used to use my reusable Wilton piping bags, until one time we were in a rush trying to make it to dinner somewhere and I was bringing deviled eggs. I was in such a hurry, that I left the piping bag filled with the left over egg mixture in the sink when we left. When we got home I cleaned out the bag, and the egg smell never went away so I threw it out. It smelled too gross for me to ever want to use again.
The easiest way to fill piping bags that I have tried is to set the tip of the bag (bent) into a cup, and fold the edges of the bag over the sides of the cup. Once you’ve filled the bag, you simple pull up the sides, twist it up, and you’re ready to pipe.
After piping is done, we garnish, and that’s it!
I prefer to use paprika and sliced green olives, but you can use whatever you want. Some people use parsley, dill, black pepper, bacon, green onion, even small slices of fresh veggies like tomatoes or radishes. Years ago we had a pot luck at work and my coworker asked if I could make jalapeño deviled eggs, so I added juice from jarred jalapeños into the filling and garnished it with small slices of jalapeños. They were delicious.
Happy Egg Making!
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