Leftover Easter eggs useful in salads, sauces, meatloaf

Decorating Easter eggs with the kids or grandkids is part of the joy of being a parent.

Figuring out how to use all those leftover hard-cooked eggs is part of the drudgery the spring holiday also brings.

One can eat only so many deviled eggs or egg salad sandwiches before the combination of creamy mayo and yolk with thickly gelatinous egg whites gets eye-rollingly old.

The palate cries out for something different.

Among the ideas proffered by Shaymus Alwin, chef de cuisine at Azure Restaurant at The Royal Hawaiian Resort, is to use the hard-cooked eggs in a Nicoise salad or in ramen.

Nicoise means “in the style of Nice,” as in France. According to the reference book “Food Lover’s Companion,” Nicoise-anything must include tomatoes, black olives, garlic and anchovies. A Salade Nicoise also includes French green beans, onions, tuna, herbs and hard-cooked eggs.

“I also like to add it to ulu (breadfruit) salad,” which is like a potato salad, Alwin said. “You could also use the yolk to thicken vinaigrettes and chop the white for the top of the salad. Warm spinach salad also tastes amazing with hard-boiled egg on it.”

To thicken a vinaigrette, “I would put the hard-cooked egg yolk in the blender with the base ingredients and use it to add body and (as) a binder,” he said.

A very old, traditional French sauce called gribiche uses anywhere from one to five hard-cooked eggs, chopped cornichons, capers, herbs and other ingredients. Recipes for the sauce, a topping for anything from vegetables to poultry to steamed veal head can be found on online sources including those for revered French chefs, respected food writers and home cooks.

The American Egg Board has tons of recipe suggestions for using its reason for being. One easy idea for hard-cooked eggs is a tortilla wrap containing cut-up eggs, shredded cheese, bell pepper strips and ranch dressing. The site’s recipes are written for food-service applications, with portions of 20 to 100 or more. Use them as a guide and scale them down to your family’s size and appetites. If you need help with the math, use a handy online recipe-scaling website such as mykitchencalculator.com.

Years ago while co-hosting a local morning radio show with my late forever-love, we interviewed chef and restaurateur Sam Choy for suggestions on what to do with leftover hard-cooked eggs.

The most memorable of his ideas, to me, was to use them in meatloaf.

Chopped up, and mixed with the meat? Nope.

Bury whole eggs in your meatloaf and bake them together — the “big reveal” is fun, as slicing it results in cross sections of the now-repurposed eggs for the unsuspecting kids.

The key is to make a rather deep valley in the meat mixture once it’s in the loaf pan, and then to cover the eggs thoroughly, sealing them in.

This is important because as the meat cooks, it shrinks, and eggs that are not buried deep enough will be exposed by receding meat.

Your columnist found this out the hard way, but a good thick topping of melted cheese can conceal many a culinary faux pas.

Send restaurant news and notes to erika@staradvertiser.com or call 529-4303. Follow Erika Engle on Twitter @eriKaengle.