Perfecting Egg Salad with Nancy Kaffer

The Best Advice Show

Nancy Kaffer is a columnist and member of the Detroit Free Press Editorial Board. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: NANCY: I'm a life-long fan of egg salad and I've often thought about how to improve my egg salad. This is slightly controversial. I make my egg salad while the eggs are still warm and everyone I've ever said this to thought it was disgusting and then as soon as they ate it they've been a convert to the warm egg salad theory. So, the way I've started making egg salad is put the eggs in the cold water, turn the burner on high for 15-minutes and then boom the perfect hard-boiled eggs every-time. No lid. Run cold water over them. Peel them. Smush them up with some mayonnaise. Salt, pepper and cayenne and then here's the secret. Toast a piece of bread. Cut a clove of garlic in half. Rub the garlic all over the toasted bread. Put the egg salad on the bread. Eat it as an open-faced sandwich. You will not regret it. It is the perfect egg salad sandwich. ZAK: Raw garlic? NANCY: Raw garlic rubbed all over the toast. It turns the bread yellow-y and then spread your egg salad on there. ZAK: What kind of bread? NANCY: Just white bread. I mean, I guess you could it with...I like a multigrain but for this the texture and flavor a multigrain would over-power the garlic rubbing. Just a nice, white bread, though. Like your Pepperidge Farm or your Sara Lee or your Avalon, your Whole Foods store brand. You don't want your Wonderbread. ZAK: Set the scene for how you're eating this. Are you standing by the sink? Are you sitting down with napkin and plate? NANCY: I normally sit down. I have a thing for decorative napkins. I'm sitting down with an attractive napkin, little glass of iced tea and a book and I cut it in half and eat it by myself. I don't want to be eating my egg salad with anybody else. I want it to be a private experience with me and my book. I love to read while I eat. Egg salad. Book. Iced tea. Garlic rubbed toast. ZAK: Do you want to hear about my ancestral egg salad? NANCY: Yes. I do. I always want to hear about egg salad. ZAK: It's actually not mine. It's my wife's family's. This is why I married her cause I tasted her family's egg salad. We have it on Shabbat on Friday night. And this comes from her grandma. She's from Poland and it's mayo-less...but wait. There's no mayo but wait. Hard-boiled eggs and then cut em up with grated radishes, diced white onion and diced, peeled cucumber and salt and vegetable oil. NANCY: Wow. ZAK: We never eat it as a sandwich. You know, we eat it with, like a piece of challah, maybe shovel some on the top of it but we're eating it with a fork as an appetizer on Friday nights and it's fab. NANCY: I can see that that would be delicious. If you were in the mood for egg salad, that might not quite scratch that itch. ZAK: It's a different kind of egg salad. NANCY: It's surprising how controversial egg salad is. People really have deeply held opinions. ZAK: Well, cause it smells farts. I think that's why people are afraid to admit they like or afraid to eat it in-front of other people like you mentioned. NANCY: I'm not afraid to. It's my oasis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices