You've Been Making Egg Salad Wrong Your Whole Life

Egg salad is the ultimate comfort food, and there are probably as many ways to make it as there are households around the world. Each family has a secret ingredient or a secret method that they feel puts their egg salad above everyone else's. And because it's such a homely dish, it may be difficult to see how the humble egg salad sandwich, particularly the kind sold at Japan's convenience stores, can inspire an Instagram movement or could have attracted the eye of the great Anthony Bourdain — but it did. Needless to say, the egg salad that caught the famously critical chef's attention was not your typical Best Foods-filled chunky egg salad.

Egg salad wasn't really a part of Japanese culture — it's a Western food concept that was brought to that country and adapted to suit Japanese tastes. This explains why a Japanese egg salad may be unlike any other you've had before. To them, a good egg salad should have no pickles, relish, celery, or raw onion, because egg salad is literally just hard boiled eggs, salt, pepper, and mayonnaise (via No Recipes).

There are two secrets that can turn what looks like a four-ingredient egg sandwich into a superstar that caught Bourdain's eye: One involves the use of the ubiquitous Japanese Kewpie mayonnaise, and the other involves the use of a food processor. Most egg salads might be assembled with eggs which are chopped or mashed, but the filling for a Japanese "tamagosando," particularly the popular convenience store variety, spends a bit of time in a food processor before becoming a softer, fluffier filling for a comforting sandwich filling (via Food52).

But if you're not a fan of soft and fluffy egg salad, which might take some getting used to if you've never had it this way before, you could choose to chop the eggs into pieces measuring about a quarter of an inch before folding it into a dressing made with Kewpie mayonnaise (there it is again!), scallion, crème fraîche, vinegar, and mustard the way the chefs at Konbi — the L.A. eatery who made egg salad sandwich an Instagram star — do (via The New York Times). Konbi admits its egg salad was inspired by staples sold at convenience stores Lawson's and Family Mart. 

And if you really don't want to stray too far from your family recipe, Just a Pinch recommends adding 1/4 cup of melted butter for every 1/2 cup of mayonnaise or Miracle Whip, which keeps your favorite style of egg salad from oozing out of your sandwich.

Either way, these recipes for egg salad are the best use of your leftover — and perfectly cooked — hardboiled eggs.