The Real Reason Your Egg Salad Is Runny

Whether you're looking for a quick, healthy lunch or trying to find the perfect side dish for your next backyard barbecue, you can't go wrong with classic egg salad. Made with hunks of hard-boiled eggs, tangy mayonnaise, pickle relish, and any number of other mix-ins, the creamy dish is packed with flavor and protein. While you can eat it right out of the bowl, it's also delicious spread between two fluffy slices of bread and enjoyed as a refreshingly light sandwich.

Egg salad is also very easy to make at home. Simply boil your eggs, chop them up, and mix all of the ingredients together. However, sometimes it doesn't turn out as well as you'd hoped. One of the biggest complaints from people who have tried whipping up homemade egg salad is that it turns out too runny. Yuck. Here's one of the common reasons your egg salad is watery instead of creamy, and how you can fix it.

Egg salad might be high in protein, but between the egg yolks and the mayonnaise, it's hardly a low-fat dish. In an attempt to reduce the amount of fat in the dish, some people will swap out regular mayonnaise for low-fat mayonnaise. However, according to home cooks on Chowhound, this could be the reason that your egg salad is turning out so runny. The Delicious Truth reports that the first ingredient in many low-fat, light, or fat-free mayo is water, as opposed to regular mayo, which lists oil as the first ingredient. So it makes sense that when you let it sit in the fridge, those lighter mayos break down faster than one with higher fat content.

An easy fix is to use the regular mayonnaise or, if you still want a lower-fat egg salad, some people recommend simply mixing in the low-fat mayo right before serving your dish.