Deviled Eggs

As far as hol­i­days go, I freely claim that July Fourth is my hands-down favorite. It has every­thing going for it. Let me enu­mer­ate alliteratively:

Food, Fam­ily, Friends, Fire­work, Fun, Free­dom, Fairs, Floats Flow­ing For­ward in sin­gle File, Fair weather.……am I For­get­ting anything?

Seri­ously, Whats not to like? Peo­ple gath­er­ing in warm weather, eat­ing fab­u­lous food, fun activ­i­ties for the kids, fin­ished up with a round of sparkly, shiny good­ness in the sky! Not to men­tion the nation­al­is­tic swellings within our souls! No other hol­i­day can fully compare!

So in Patri­otic Prepa­ra­tion, we Pro­pose a Plethora of Potluck Pos­si­bil­i­ties. For your Pleasure.

By next Fri­day, you will have a full carte du jour of down home dishes, from appe­tizer to bev­er­age, to either cook your­self, or assign out to your guests!

Each day from Sun­day for­ward, tune in to secretlife­o­fachef­swife and be inspired. We hope. Because we love food and we love to share!

We kick off said menu with an appe­tizer. A teaser, if you will. To get your salivitic juices flow­ing, and your gro­cery lists a-going.

Dev­iled eggs

Dev­iled egg recipes are like so many other stan­dard pot luck dishes. There are 2700 ver­sions. I’m not say­ing this ver­sion is the best, that would be pre­sump­tu­ous, but I will say that if you like dev­iled eggs, sweet rel­ish, and dijon mus­tard, you will think these are won­der­ful! If you pre­fer dill rel­ish and yel­low mus­tard, by all means sub­sti­tute, and then you will think these are won­der­ful! Don’t skip the step where you run the yolks through a sieve. It makes them smoother than you would imag­ine! So yum! Don’t mix the fill­ing and fill in too far in advance, or the eggs will darken and dry out on the top.

makes 24

12 large or extra large eggs

1/2 cup mayonnaise

2 tea­spoons cider vinegar

3 –4 tea­spoons sweet rel­ish (try to find a brand that has a smaller texture)

1 tea­spoon stone ground dijon mustard

1 tea­spoon fresh chives, chopped small (like, REALLY tiny!)

1/8 tea­spoon kosher salt (halve this amount if using table salt)

1/8 tea­spoon pepper

fresh chive tips for garnish

Boil your eggs.

Every­one has a dif­fer­ent method for this. Maybe some are kitchen myths, maybe not. I’m not here to judge.

Usu­ally.

I like a yolk that is cooked all the way, but not too dry. I place my eggs in a large pot, and cover the eggs with cold water. I add 2–3 table­spoons of salt to the water. Then I bring the water to a pretty con­vinc­ing boil, turn off the heat, and cover with a lid. If the eggs are extra large, I let it sit 15 min­utes. Smaller eggs can go 12 min­utes. Set your timer.

When the timer dings, imme­di­ately put the pot in the sink and run cold water over the eggs to stop them cook­ing, you can drain the water first if you want. When eggs are cooled, crack them in a way that works for you. If I described my method here, you would think I was nuts.

Care­fully slice the eggs in half the long way. You know; tip to tip. To allow the eggs to sit evenly on your serv­ing plate, slice a tiny bit off the bot­tom of each egg. Pop out the yolks into a bowl.

If you want your fill­ing super creamy and deli­cious, press the yolks through a fine sieve before mix­ing in the remain­ing ingredients.

Then mix in the remain­ing ingre­di­ents. I used a plain #10 tip in a small cake dec­o­rat­ing bag to fill the egg halves. Use a star dec­o­ra­tive tip if you’d rather.

Related posts:

• Jalapeno Pop­per Dip
• Greek Feta Bruschetta
• The Most Patri­otic Fourth of July Pops I’ve Ever Seen