Add Herby Flavor Notes To Egg Salad With A Dollop Of Pesto

Egg salad is a filling, comforting classic that's usually the safest bet whether you're ordering off a lunch menu or picking up a convenience store sandwich. While mayo, mustard, aromatics, and the occasional pickled veggie imbue egg salad with creaminess and tang, a bright and fresh pesto is the bold herbal ingredient that'll make egg salad exceptional. 

Pesto is the height of savory sauces, with earthy, nutty, and salty ingredients to complement the herbal centerpiece. It's not only a common pasta sauce, but it's also used in plenty of egg recipes. Pesto is a tasty, oily foundation for fried eggs and makes a great topping for creamy scrambled eggs or a baked frittata. Eggs are known for their versatility, and egg salad is a blank slate for nuanced flavors like pesto.

You can blend pesto with a few tablespoons of mayo for an easy two-ingredient egg salad dressing. However, pesto is a great alternative to mayo-based egg salad, and you can use it as a full dressing swap by mixing it with a few hard-boiled yolks and lemon juice or vinegar. You can also blend pesto with Greek yogurt or sour cream for another mayo-free dressing. If you've already prepared a classic creamy egg salad, you can always place it over a bed of pesto-dressed greens or use pesto as a condiment in your next egg salad sandwich.

Like egg salad recipes, pesto recipes also encompass numerous adaptations. Pesto can use any combination of herbs, bitter greens, seeds, or nuts to create different flavors and culinary themes. You can use the versatility of both recipes to create unique egg salads and salad applications. For example, pesto works well with Middle Eastern spice blends like Za'atar, so you could use pesto instead of mayo and make a Za'atar egg salad sandwich. Arugula pesto would bring a nice herbal bitterness that would balance the smoky paprika, sweet pickle relish, and tangy sweet balsamic vinegar for a deviled egg salad. 

Cilantro and pepita pesto would give egg salad a Mexican twist. You could use Mexican crema instead of Greek yogurt or mayo for a cilantro pesto egg salad with diced roasted poblanos. Serve it in a sandwich with slices of avocado and pickled red onions. For the most elegant take on pesto egg salad, you could deconstruct pesto and add it to a bowl with diced jammy eggs. Roughly chop basil and parsley, toasted walnuts or cashews and shaved parmesan cheese with jammy eggs, a drizzle of lemon juice, oil, and Greek yogurt and serve a spoonful over toasted sourdough ciabatta.