Nathan's Sweet Horseradish Pickles Complete the Circle and Lead To The Perfect Egg Salad

This is not really a recipe in the traditional sense as much as it a suggestion of a recipe. My mother loved egg salad and I grew up eating it made with Miracle Whip, French's yellow mustard and a generous heaping of Bick's sweet green relish on squishy, white sandwich bread. It never occurred to me that people ate it any other way, to be perfectly honest and I was surprised when I grew up and made egg salad for other people, to find them kind of shocked by the addition of the mustard and relish. People are weird. Everyone knows that egg salad requires more than just a dallop of mayonnaise. It's perfectly acceptable to add some minced scallion, red onion or shallot too. Hard boiled eggs with nothing but mayonnaise is like peanut butter toast without buttering the toast, right?




When I miss my mom, I crave egg salad and today I was missing my mom so I finally got around to making it. Over the years I have adapted my mom's "recipe" and I now use Hellman's instead of Miracle Whip and grainy dijon mustard in place of her beloved French's but I never stopped using the Bick's sweet green relish until today. Even though I now find that relish to be kind of thick and slimy, I haven't been able to replace it, although plain bread and butter pickles have come close but there was still something missing so I kept going back to the green relish.

Today I found my egg salad muse. I used some minced Gourmet Sweet Horseradish pickles from Nathan's. Before I left for my trip, Nathan's kindly sent me three jars of pickles to try out. I had already tasted the half sours and full sours at a pickle tasting party where, much to our surprise, both Shack and I chose the Nathan's half sours as our favourite pickle over the Strubs. We are generally pretty hardcore Strubs people when we aren't eating our homemade Dickey Dills and I had to look at the bottom of the bowls twice to make sure that there wasn't a mix up but, nope. We both chose the Nathan's half sours with the full sours coming in a close second.

They sent a jar of full sours, a jar of half sours and a third jar of something I had never tried before. As soon as I tasted the sweet horseradish pickles, I knew I had found my replacement for the Bick's relish but I didn't have a chance to try it out until now. This pickle adds the sweet pickle taste, without the kind of slimy texture of the relish but with the added kick of the horseradish (my mom loved horseradish)

I now have my own, perfect grown up version of my mother's egg salad and I think that if she were here, she would give it a hearty thumbs up. Nathan's I thank you for the pickles, my mother thanks you for the pickles and eggs, everywhere, thank you for the pickles.

Mom's Pimped Out Egg Salad

for one large egg salad sandwich:

2 extra large eggs
2 tbls Hellman's mayonnaise
approx 2 tbls, finely chopped Nathan's Sweet Horseradish pickle (about 3 slices out of the jar)
1/2 tsp grainy dijon
freshly ground black pepper
two slices of your favourite bread
butter
arugula
sliced tomato


Put the two eggs in a pot of cold water, bring to a boil, let boil for a couple of minutes before you remove the pot from the heat, put the lid on the pot and let the eggs sit for 20 minutes.
Remove the eggs and put in the fridge to cool them completely.

Peel the eggs and mash the hard boiled eggs in a shallow bowl with a fork. Throw in the mayo, the pickles and the mustard and mix well. Now taste it and you can decide you want some more pickle or mustard or even more mayo if you like it even creamier. It's your egg salad, not mine.

Toast your bread, butter it and then lay the egg salad on one slice, add some tomato, a few grinds of black pepper, a handful of arugula for a peppery bite, top with the second slice of bread.