What to Do with All Those Hard-Boiled Easter Eggs

Happy Easter Monday, the day of sugar hangovers and figuring out what to do with all those hard-boiled eggs you have left over!
So. Many. Eggs.

Over the years, I’ve come up with a few recipes for leftover hard-boiled eggs that help us get through them without burning us out. I hope you like them just as much as my family does!

Sauce Gribiche

This is an old school recipe I got out of The Joy of Cooking and come back to every year. If you can grill it, you can use this sauce on it! I particularly like it on grilled salmon, grilled chicken, grilled vegetables, and roasted potatoes.

Ingredients

5 or 6 cornichons, drained and chopped
1 tablespoon capers, drained and chopped
1 tablespoon whole-grained mustard
1 to 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
3 hardboiled eggs, peeled and roughly chopped
2 to 3 tablespoons mixed herbs, chopped (I usually use flat-leaf parsley, tarragon, and thyme)
salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Combine the cornichons, capers, mustard, and vinegar in a bowl and whisk in the olive oil. Gently stir in the eggs and herbs. Season to taste, and chill. This sauce can keep in the fridge for up to 3 days.

Salvadoran Guacamole

This is, to my mind, more like an avocado egg salad than a guacamole, but whatever you call it, it’s completely delicious. I love this on whole-grain toast or on a bagel in the morning. It’s infinitely expandable; I use a one-to-one avocado-to-egg ratio.

Ingredients

1 ripe avocado
1 hardboiled egg
As much finely diced red onion as you like
Chopped fresh cilantro
Lime juice
A couple of dashes of your favorite hot sauce
salt and pepper to taste

Directions

In a bowl, mash the avocado and the hardboiled egg together. Stir in the red onion, cilantro, lime juice, hot sauce, and salt and pepper. That’s it! While you can make a big batch ahead of time, it doesn’t hold very well, so I suggest making only what you need at one time.

Chopped Niçoise Salad

The classic Salade Niçoise is made of tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, Niçoise olives, potatoes, tuna or anchovies, and haricot vert and is one of the perfect salads. However, since very few things in this life are perfect, I like this chopped version because it’s much easier to eat!

Ingredients

For the salad:

½ pound thin green beans, trimmed and blanched and cut into bite sized pieces
4 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and cut into quarters
2 cups cherry-type tomatoes, halved
½ cup olives, pitted (if you can’t find true Niçoise olives, Kalamatas are just as tasty)
1 head of romaine lettuce, rinsed and roughly chopped
2 4-ounce cans of good, oil-packed tuna, drained (I have been known to use leftover chicken or salmon in this)
4 gold or red-skinned potatoes, either roasted or boiled and roughly chopped (I usually make extra when I’m making the potato salad for Easter!)

For the dressing:

¼ cup red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard, either smooth or whole-grained
1 small shallot, minced
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Make the dressing. I put all the ingredients in a jar with a tight-fitting lid and shake the heck out of it, but you could make it in a bowl by combining all the ingredients except the olive oil and then whisking in the olive oil slowly. Either way, this is a great basic dressing for almost anything!

To make the salad, I dress the lettuce with some of the dressing. I then divide the lettuce, green beans, eggs, olives, tuna, and potatoes between four pasta bowls and drizzle with extra dressing. If I want to get fancy (or if I have some leftover from another recipe), I add in fresh herbs to the salad – dill, tarragon, parsley, chervil, chives, and oregano are particularly delicious in this. Serve four.