Old-Fashioned Deviled Eggs

Who the hell knows what the term "old-fashioned" really means? This recipe is touted as "Old-Fashioned Deviled Eggs," so in this case, I guess old-fashioned could mean simple. Or boring. Or quaint. Or really pretty expressionless. There just wasn't anything special, at all, about this recipe.

When I established this blog nearly a year ago, a very important component was the scoring system I chose. I selected five criteria by which to grade deviled eggs - texture, flavor, uniqueness, appearance, and ease of preparation. Texture and flavor were givens. I considered proportion, but declined to include it since so many deviled recipes are not written, and since I can always adjust proportions according to the ingredients. I also think the appearance of a deviled egg is important, so I included that.

The two "wild card" scoring criteria I chose were uniqueness and ease of preparation. These run sort of counter, as something unique may have an ingredient that is somewhat difficult to find or prepare. Similarly, something really easy to prepare may just have a few ingredients, and thus may not be unique. A great recipe finds the middle ground and is both unique AND easy to prepare.

This recipe certainly is easy. But unique? Nope. Just "old-fashioned," which I now think is code for "boring." There's nothing WRONG with this recipe, there's just nothing special about it.

Here is the recipe:

6 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and cut in half
1/4 cup mayonnaise
2 1/4 teaspoons Dijon mustard
Tabasco sauce (to taste)
Kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper (to taste)
3 tablespoons minced fresh chives.

1. Mash egg yolks in a bowl until fine.
2. Add mayonnaise, mustard, Tabasco sauce, salt and pepper.
3. Fill egg whites with mixture.
4. Garnish with chives.
5. Allow eggs to chill in refrigerator for at least an hour before serving.


Above: adding the mayonnaise and Dijon mustard


Above: adding the Tabasco sauce, and the salt and pepper


Above: the finished product

I guess I do have to give these eggs some credit for using fresh chives - a topping I like because of both the visual appeal and the flavor they provide. But all in all, just boring.

Here are the scores:

Overall: 58 out of 100
Texture: 14 out of 20
Flavor: 10 out of 20
Uniqueness: 7 out of 20
Appearance: 12 out of 20
Ease of preparation: 15 out of 20

Comments?

(Supposedly) Hot Deviled Eggs

It's been a while since I've posted. Lots of reasons:

1. I've been traveling a bit and haven't made deviled eggs for my travels.
2. I've made a few recipes, but have yet to post them.
3. I HAVE made deviled eggs a few times to share with people, but I've been sticking to "tried and true" recipes rather than experimenting.

And I've realized something else in making "tried and true" recipes. I LOVE the Bacon And Cheese Deviled Eggs (http://thebestdeviledeggs.blogspot.com/2007/09/bacon-and-cheese-deviled-eggs.html) tested last September, and I make them relatively often. In fact, they received a VERY high composite score of 83 out of 100. However... other people don't like them as much. Such is life, and this serves as a reminder that my personal preferences influence the deviled egg grading more than the opinions of my panelists.

Here is the newest recipe, which I actually made a few weeks ago but just now got around to posting.

The key to this recipe, which supposedly originated in Gourmet magazine btu I'm not so sure - and the key to a few others I will make and post about intermittently - is HOT Hungarian paprika. Hungarian paprika comes in several varietes, and the most common is sweet Hungarian paprika. But this recipe specifically calls for HOT Hungarian paprika, which I found at a local international grocery. It is pictured below:

The recipe doesn't call for much of it (just 1/8 of a teaspoon) but the recipe ALSO calls for 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper. So I expected heat, and lots of it. In fact, I looked forward to the reactions of the tasting panel to the heat in this recipe. And alas... it wasn't that hot. Really, it was OK, easy to make, and just sort of plain. Here is the recipe:

6 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and halved
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/8 teaspoon HOT Hungarian paprika
chopped fresh chives

1. Mash egg yolks in a small bowl.
2. Add mayonnaise, mustard, cayenne pepper, and paprika.
3. Blend well and fill egg whites with mixture.
4. Garnish with fresh chopped chives.
5. Allow eggs to chill in refrigerator for at least 1 hour before serving.

Above: adding the mayonnaise and Dijon mustard

Above: adding the cayenne pepper and HOT Hungarian paprika

Above: the finished product, garnished with the fresh chives.

Part of the scoring of deviled egg recipes, to me, considers the expectations. In other words, there wasn't anything WRONG with this recipe, but it didn't match my expectations. Could I make it again and double the amount of cayenne and paprika? Sure... but the flavor itself wasn't good enough to warrant additional tries to perfect this recipe, like I do with others. I have other recipes that use HOT Hungarian paprika, and I'll try them and grade them, but I'm not really going forward with this specific recipe. It just doesn't have anything in it that warrants more effort.

Here are the scores:

Overall: 63 out of 100
Texture: 15 out of 100
Flavor: 6 out of 100 (lowered because of the heat expectations)
Uniqueness: 12 out of 100 (2 extra points because of the hot Hungarian paprika)
Appearance: 12 out of 100
Ease of preparation: 18 out of 100

Comments?

Shallot Deviled Eggs

A shallot is simply a smaller, slightly milder version of an onion. While an onion's strong smell and flavor might be overwhelming in a deviled egg recipe, a shallot seems like a perfect idea. Nice flavor, nice scent, shallots just would seem to be a great idea as the primary component in a deviled egg recipe.

And they were. This recipe uses the deviled egg staples - mayonnaise and mustard - and supplements the shallots with a little celery salt, a dash of cayenne pepper on top, and an additional topping of fresh chives. I like the idea of the double garnish, if only for visual reasons. These eggs look really cool and very appetizing.

Here is the recipe:

6 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and sliced in half

2 tablespoons mayonnaise

2 tablespoons yellow mustard

1 shallot, finely minced

pinch celery salt

pepper to taste

cayenne pepper, as needed

minced fresh chives, as needed

1. Mash egg yolks with mayonnaise, mustard, shallot, celery salt and pepper.

2. Place a scoop of the mixture in each egg white half.

3. Sprinkle with chives and a generous amount of cayenne pepper.

4. Allow eggs to chill for at least an hour for flavors to blend.

Above: adding the mayonnaise, mustard, and shallots


Above: adding the pinch of celery salt, the eggs with the cayenne pepper garnish, and the final product with the chives as a garnish.

This recipe is easy, quick, a bit unique, looks good with the double garnish, and is tasty to boot!

Here are the scores:

Overall: 79 out of 100
Texture: 16 out of 20
Flavor: 16 out of 20
Uniqueness: 15 out of 20 (extra because of the double garnish)
Appearance: 15 out of 20 (more extra because of the double garnish)
Ease of preparation: 17 out of 20

Comments?

Champagne Vinegar Deviled Eggs with Chives

I like using chives from my herb garden in the summer, so this isn't the first deviled egg recipe I've tried that uses chives. I had high hopes for this recipe because it thins the mixture with a little heavy cream, which I thought might be a good idea I hadn't explored yet, and because the recipe uses champagne vinegar, which I thought might give the flavor a little upscale kick.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. The texture was a little runny, the flavor was a little bland, and these eggs didn't even get eaten up by my tasters. This was one of the rare occasions where I had to throw away a couple of deviled eggs.

Not that they were THAT bad. They just weren't that GOOD either. The ingredients that should set this recipe apart - sugar and champagne vinegar - just got lost. When you could taste them, they weren't that good. But you mostly couldn't taste them.

Here is the recipe:

6 hard boiled eggs, peeled and split in half

1/4 cup mayonnaise

3/4 tablespoon heavy cream

1/8 teaspoon sugar

1/2 tablespoon champagne vinegar

good quality sea salt to taste

snipped fresh chives

1. Mash the egg yolks.

2. Add mayonnaise, cream, sugar, vinegar, and sea salt

3. Fill egg white halves with filling.

4. Garnish with chives.

5. Let deviled eggs sit in the refrigerator for at least an hour before serving.

Above: adding the mayonnaise, cream, and sugar

Above: adding the champagne vinegar and the sea salt

Above: the finished product, garnished with fresh snipped chives

Here are the scores:

Overall: 59 out of 100
Texture: 9 out of 20 (the cream was a good idea, but they were a little runny)
Flavor: 8 out of 20
Uniqueness: 11 out of 20
Appearance: 15 out of 20
Ease of preparation: 16 out of 20

Comments?

Deviled Eggs with Capers

This recipe made me change my mind about a few things.

1. In previous blog entries, I've bashed butter as a deviled egg ingredient.http://thebestdeviledeggs.blogspot.com/2007/08/decadent-deviled-eggs.html and http://thebestdeviledeggs.blogspot.com/2008/04/beckys-deviled-eggs.html However, when used correctly, butter works - less as a flavoring agent and more as a textural ingredient that thickens up a deviled egg filling. In this recipe, it definitely works.

2. I've also been critical of recipes that don't have any "heft" to them, and I define heft as some sort of meat. Doesn't matter if it's chicken, bacon, prosciutto, whatever... I like recipes with meat and have been critical of recipes that tend to rely on herbs for the flavoring. But after the disaster that was the deviled ham in the filling (http://thebestdeviledeggs.blogspot.com/2008/05/double-deviled-eggs.html), I guess I was ready for something new. And this one delivers.

3. Lastly, I've been open about wanting to try a series of recipes that use something other than paprika as a garnish. It started here - http://thebestdeviledeggs.blogspot.com/2008/02/hells-eggs.html. So I've tried recipes that use parsley, herbs, all sorts of stuff, as a garnish. This recipe suggested either parsley or parsley sprigs as a garnish, and I went half and half. The parsley really didn't add much except visual appeal, but frankly, I really liked the paprika! It looked kind of cool, it added a bit of bite, and it was very easy. So... a new appeciation of paprika as a deviled egg garnish has been developed, and I'm going to try to test a few recipes that use DIFFERENT types of paprika. To be continued...

But back to this recipe. A reader sent me this recipe, which is credited to the classic magazine Southern Living, and it worked well on a warm spring day. In fact it worked so well, I made it TWICE - once for testing, and once just to enjoy. When you write a deviled egg blog and have a backlog of about 75 recipes to try, it's a rare occurance to make a deviled egg recipe just for your own personal enjoyment. That says a lot about the quality of this recipe. The capers added a nice crunch, but didn't dominate the flavor. And again, I like the fact that I can use the fresh chives out of my herb garden.

Here is the recipe:

6 hard-boiled eggs
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 tablespoon butter, softened
2 teaspoon drained capers
1 teaspoon fresh chives, chopped
1/8 teaspoon dry mustard
salt and pepper to taste
paprika (optional)
fresh parsley sprigs (optional)

1. Mash egg yolks.
2. Sit in mayonnaise, butter, capers, chives, and mustard.
3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
4. Fill egg whites with yolk mixture.
5. Garnish with paprika or parsley.
6. Cover and chill at least 1 hour or until ready to serve.


Above: adding the mayonnaise, butter, and capers


Above: adding the chives and dry mustard

Above: the finished product, half with paprika as a garnish and half with the parsley

This recipe surprised me with how good it was. The butter made the texture sort of thick and manageable, a problem I've had in other recipes where the flavoring is basically herbs. The capers were crunchy and flavorful, but not dominant, and the chives were a nice seasonal hint. Also, the mustard was just BARELY there, but was very good. This recipe really combines and uses all of its ingredients well in every way.

Here are the scores:

Overall: 77 out of 100 (a very good score for an herb-based recipe)
Texture: 18 out of 20
Flavor: 15 out of 20
Uniqueness: 15 out of 20
Appearance: 13 out of 20
Ease of preparation: 16 out of 20

Comments?

Chive-Tarragon Deviled Eggs

As the weather warms up, so must the style of deviled eggs. Spring herbs have sprung, so I was glad to use a couple in this recipe. Plus, it was good to get the taste of Becky's Nasty Deviled Eggs out of my mouth, even if it was just a simple, light recipe. There was a lot of stuff going on in this recipe, some interesting ingredients, and I really liked that I could use some fresh chives from my herb garden.

I prefer that deviled eggs be more substantive. I like bacon in them, maybe some other meat as heft. And these eggs are definitely light, almost refreshing. I didn't think they would be particularly well-received, but my tasting panel gobbled them up pretty quickly.

Here is the recipe:

6 hard-boiled eggs
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1/2 tablespoon lemon juice
few drops hot sauce
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh chives
1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh tarragon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon dry mustard
additional chives for garnish

1. Mash egg yolks.
2. Stir in mayonnaise, lemon juice, hot sauce, herbs, salt, and mustard.
3. Fill egg white halves with yolk mixture.
4. Garnish with additional finely chopped chives
5. Allow to chill for at least 1 hour before serving.


Above: adding the mayonnaise, lemon juice, and hot sauce

Above: adding the chives, tarragon, salt, and dry mustard


Above: the finished product, with chives as garnish

So, in the end, this was a pretty good recipe. The lemon juice gave the eggs a little bit of a refreshing flavor. The herbs worked well in this season. The slight hot sauce was there for just a LITTLE bite. And the mustard made the flavor just a little more complex. These aren't the best recipe I've tried, but they are pretty good.

Here are the scores:

Overall: 65 out of 100
Texture: 14 out of 100
Flavor: 14 out of 100
Uniqueness: 12 out of 100
Appearance: 11 out of 100
Ease of preparation: 14 out of 100

Comments?

Hell's Eggs

This is the 29th different deviled egg recipe tasted by this blog, and this one has the best name BY A MILE. "Hell's Eggs." It says it all, right? Not quite.

These eggs, apparently, are supposed to be hot. Very hot. I am not one of those people who subscribe to the philosophy of "the hotter the better," I care more about what the flavor and texture of the food item are. So I was prepared to think these things were just too hot. A serrano chile, some cayenne powder, and pure chile powder were all ingredients, so I was ready for some HEAT. Further, I don't like cilantro - I'm one of those people who think it tastes like soap - so I expected THAT to just make me dislike these eggs even more.

But that's not what happened. Were they hot? Sure. But they were also tolerable. In fact, they were interesting in a lot of different ways. The minced garlic and finely diced chile added an interesting crunch to the texture, and the scant amounts of the cayenne chile powders added some heat, but didn't overwhelm. Plus, this is recipe #1 of 5 in a row where I refuse to use paprika as a garnish. And this recipe included paprika in the filling, but the garnish was chopped chives - and they really looked good! All in all, a pleasant surprise based on my expectations of the recipe. However... I guess these eggs didn't really live up to their tremendous name - Hell's Eggs.

Here is the recipe:

6 hard-boiled eggs
1 clove of garlic
1 serrano chile, seeded
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1/2 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon dried mustard
1/8 teaspoon cayenne powder
1/8 teaspoon pure chile powder
1/8 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon chopped cilantro
1/2 teaspoon chopped chives

1. Finely mince both garlic and serrano chile.
2. Crumble egg yolks until very fine.
3. Add garlic and chile.
4. Add mayonnaise, lemon juice, mustard, and spices.
5. Add chopped cilantro.
6. Fill egg white halves with filling.
7. Top with chopped chives.


Above: adding the minced garlic, minced serrano chile, and mayonnaise


Above: adding the lemon juice and mustard powder


Above: adding the cayenne pepper, pure chile powder, and paprika


Above: adding the salt and cilantro


Above: the final product, Hell's Eggs, topped with chives

The ingredients work really well together here. The chile and the cayenne and chile powders add heat. The chile and the garlic add some textural crunch. The garlic and the mustard, and even the cilantro, add some subtle flavor. And the lemon juice, I suppose, not only moistens the filling but also seems to cut the heat from the cayenne and chile powder so that it's a flavor more than heat. And maybe it's my sudden anti-paprika-garnish bias, but I really like both the flavor and texture of the chives as a garnish.

Here are the scores:

Overall: 77 out of 100
Texture: 18 out of 20
Flavor: 16 out of 20
Uniqueness: 17 out of 20 (plus 2 because of the name Hell's Eggs)
Appearance: 16 out of 20
Ease of preparation: 10 out of 20 (downgraded because of the chopping - plus I had to go to a specialty store to get pure chile powder)

Comments?

Deviled Eggs with Tarragon

And it had been so much fun. The last few recipes, maybe a half dozen or so, had all been pretty good. They weren't all the same, but they were all good in their own ways. Then I tried a recipe for "Deviled Eggs with Tarragon." Ouch.

Tarragon, known as the dragon herb, supposedly pairs well with fish, chicken, or egg. So these eggs should be good, right? A little tarragon as the dominant flavor? A little mayonnaise for texture, and a little Dijon mustard and capers to give the flavor a little more complex profile? Doesn't work. Here's the recipe.

6 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and sliced in half
4 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon minced capers
1 1/2 teaspoons minced tarragon leaves
2 tablespoons minced chives.

Mix yolks, mayonnaise, mustard, capers, and tarragon leaves. Fill egg halves with mixture. Allow to chill for at least 1 hour for flavors to meld. Garnish with minced chives.


Above: adding the mayonnaise and Dijon mustard

Above: adding the minced capers and the minced tarragon leaves

Above: the finished "Deviled Eggs with Tarragon, after garnishing with chives

So these are just not that good. I guess the best way to describe them is just "blah." The tarragon flavor is there for sure, it just doesn't work. The texture is alright, although I honestly can't tell that the Dijon mustard adds anything to either the texture or the flavor. The capers are evident in the flavor, but unlike the smoked salmon deviled egg recipe from earlier this week, the capers don't seem to add anything. I guess I like deviled eggs that have a little more flavor to them.

Overall: 45 out of 100
Texture: 13 out of 20
Flavor: 3 out of 20
Uniqueness: 4 out of 20
Appeareance: 10 out of 20
Ease of preparation: 15 out of 20

Comments?