Amp Up The Flavor Of Egg Salad With This Tangy Classic Condiment

Ah, good old egg salad. The ever-reliable deli staple. Equally at home in a sandwich, on a cracker, or eaten straight out of the tub while standing next to your fridge at 1 a.m. Some like their eggs hard-boiled, some like them soft. Some prefer their egg salad to be jammy, with celery or scallions.

However you take yours, one thing that rarely varies is the taste. Egg salad is egg salad, right? But that doesn't have to be the case. In fact, there's an ingenious way to give your boring old egg salad a boost — and chances are you already have it in your fridge.

All the flavors of tartar sauce belong in your egg salad. Yup, that's right, the pantry staple you put on your fish and chips. But it turns out that it's not just fish it pairs well with: the tart hit from the onion, the sweetness of pickled relish, and the acidity of lemon come together to take your egg salad to the next level.

Sure, the jarred stuff works just fine, but if you really want to upgrade your egg salad, you need to be making your own tartar sauce. All you need is mayonnaise, pickles (sweet or sour), onion, and some freshly squeezed lemon juice. You'll want to use a ratio of two tablespoons of tartar sauce to one cup of egg salad (or about five to six eggs worth). Chop all your ingredients up, combine them in a bowl, and you're good to go! And if you feel like going one better, throw your own homemade mayo into the mix.

You can also enhance your tartar sauce with a beautiful herbaceous quality by adding chopped tarragon, parsley, or even cilantro. This will help to brighten up the sauce, enhancing the natural flavors of the other ingredients and balancing the sourness of the pickle. Capers will add a briny, salty kick, and some Dijon mustard (or even horseradish) will bring that shoots-up-your-nose-but-you-like-it kind of heat, adding yet more brightness and complementing the acidity of the lemon. You could even mix in some olive oil to round it off with a touch of earthiness and really deepen those flavors.

There's a satisfaction in doing it all yourself — making your own sauce takes so little time, and is really not much effort. Plus, it'll always taste better than the stuff you get from a jar!

The addition of tartar sauce to your egg salad opens up some interesting flavor combinations. Of course, we all know and love tartar as a fantastic condiment for fried catfish, fishcakes, or fish and chips. But most people wouldn't immediately jump to the thought of pairing it with fish ... and egg?

That's right, fish and egg. Take some inspiration from the British (though they would rather you call it "egg mayonnaise") and serve your egg salad (with tartar) in a sandwich of soft white bread with butter and anchovies. The powerful saltiness of this divisive fish is tempered by the richness of the butter, enhancing that lovely fishy flavor and enriching the natural sweetness of the egg, filling the sandwich with umami. This, in turn, brings out all the notes hidden in your tartar — sweet onion, rich mayonnaise, tangy pickle, and bright lemon!

On the other side of the Atlantic, you're more likely to find egg salad served on toasted bread, with lettuce and mustard. It also works fantastically in toasted challah, with red onion (and maybe even a little Tabasco sauce). The onion brings a welcome crunchy texture and sweetness, a great contrast to Tabasco's earthy heat!

However you want to eat your egg salad is up to you — but the addition of tartar sauce, a pantry staple you might have never thought to pair with it, is a surprising but delicious and oh-so-simple upgrade!