This Secret Ingredient Can Take Your Deviled Eggs Up A Notch

If you have eggs, mayonnaise, mustard, and paprika, you have everything you need to make deviled eggs — well, almost everything. A basic deviled egg is certainly a tasty addition for any potluck spread or barbecue, but the addition of one simple ingredient can really take the recipe up a notch. According to Taste of Home, that ingredient is butter. Not only does butter contribute a rich flavor, it also improves the texture, giving your egg mixture an even creamier mouthfeel that you can't get from mayonnaise alone.

Butter in deviled eggs works the same way that the butter in buttercream frosting does. Cupcakes, for example, can sit out for an extended period without the frosting on top losing structure. Deviled eggs, however, don't remain as stable, and the piped-on filling usually only looks perfect right after you first do it. As The Kitchn notes, this filling is what gives deviled eggs such a short shelf life, because the texture is subject to change into either a pile of mush or develop a crust over the top. Butter, fortunately, helps prevent that.

The first step to adding butter to your deviled eggs is to make sure you're actually using butter. Because the whole point of the addition is to maximize the structural integrity of the egg mixture, margarine or other plant-based butter alternatives don't substitute well for the real thing. According to Eat This, Not That, the water content in margarine is a lot higher than that of butter, and that means the consistency is literally watered down. Vegan butter isn't much different. As My Recipes explains, vegan butter is simply a type of margarine made only with plant-based ingredients, but both are still majority oil and water.

Provided that you're using actual butter, Taste of Home recommends a ratio of two tablespoons per batch of deviled eggs. Softened butter is best because it blends better with the rest of the ingredients without the risk of any curdling. Per Taste of Home's instructions, simply combine the egg yolks, mayonnaise, and mustard as you normally would in a standard recipe, then add the softened butter. Since there's just a couple tablespoons of it, the butter only serves to amplify the original flavors of the deviled eggs instead of overpowering them, and, of course, they'll also hold up much better when you're ready to serve them.