Elevate Your Egg Salad Sandwich With This One Spice

Egg salad sandwich is one of those dishes that you might go years on end without ever thinking about, then one day it gets stuck in your head and won't leave you alone until you make a bunch to scratch that palate itch. Unfortunately, that particular craving can come with all sorts of surprising troubles. Egg salad is surprisingly easy to get wrong, to the point that there's a fair chance you've been making it wrong your whole life.

As such, before you this deceptively tricky delicacy, it's well worth looking into some of the greatest pro tips out there, such as the egg salad recipe Martha Stewart swears by and the secret trick to making the best egg salad. Oh, and if you really, really want to bring your next egg salad sandwich experience to the next level, there's also a simple, if arguably rather counterintuitive addition you can make to the recipe. Here's the one spice you can use to elevate your egg salad sandwich.

Of all the ingredients you might consider adding to your egg salad sandwich, curry powder might not be the first to spring to mind. However, according to Teri Lyn Fisher and Jenny park's cookbook The Perfect Egg: A Fresh Take on Recipes for Morning, Noon, and Night (via Austin 360), it's just what might pique your interest when it comes to this particular dish. Their trick to adding a nice curry tang to the egg salad is to use soft-boiled eggs instead of the hard-boiled ones and avoid the commonly used chives and mustard. Instead, they add curry powder (and a small amount of cumin) to the eggs in order to create a new, delicious flavor profile.

Of course, if you're not into curry powder as such, you can always experiment with the various things you can substitute for curry powder. However, if you have an affinity for this delicious spice blend, you might just find that including it in the recipe allows your egg salad sandwich to soar to previously unexpected levels of deliciousness.

People often associate the term "curry" with delicious Indian food, but as its inclusion in your next batch of egg salad will no doubt prove, curry powder is a pretty versatile beast that is by no means confined to a single culture or cuisine. Though curry leaves are a thing, the curry powder that you're probably most familiar with is a British creation – an overarching "this kind of tastes like Indian food"-themed spice mix that handily minimizes the frantic "a dash of this, half a teaspoon of that" aspect of using spices while you cook. The usual suspects in the mixture are turmeric (which brings the color), coriander, and cumin, but it's rarely a three-ingredient cocktail – a vast array of other ingredients also go in the fray.

Though it's not what you should first grab when cooking proper Indian dishes, curry powder's sweet-and-savory tang makes it an incredibly versatile thing that, per The Spruce Eats, has a great many uses. You can go a bit nuts, and try to spice up your popcorn with it. Of course, curry powder also adds to the flavor of soups and can be a total superstar spice for things like hummus or roast vegetables ... and, of course, egg salad. Yum!

Imagine, if you will, a world where you either don't much care for curry powder or perhaps just ate a whole bunch of it with your last batch of egg salad sandwiches. You crave more of that better-than-usual eggy, bread-y stuff, yet are still full up on curry powder. What to do? What to do?

Fortunately, there's no reason to panic, for there are many things out there that can bring new flavors to your next egg salad sandwich. Apart from curry powder, The Perfect Egg invites you to consider mixing caper and dill into the egg mixture, or perhaps fresh herbs. If you want to get adventurous, you can chop up some jalapeños and cilantro in there, instead. Oh, and if you're really feeling like taking things to the next level, you can go all in and replace the traditional chives in the egg salad with an appropriate amount of avocado, chopped red onion, and – dare we even say it? – bacon bits. 

You get the idea. Sure, there are tricks to making a great egg salad. But once you get the basic recipe down, you can easily adjust it to whatever direction best fits your mood and sates your cravings. Bon appétit!