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3-Ingredient Egg Salad
This three ingredient egg salad is proof that the simplest things are often the best. Perfectly boiled eggs, hollandaise, and pepper. That’s it. Eat it with a fork straight from the bowl, pile it onto toast, or stuff it into a sandwich. However you choose to eat it, it’s deeply satisfying and ready in minutes.
3-Ingredient Egg Salad
My 3-Ingredient Egg Salad keeps things beautifully simple with hard-boiled eggs, hollandaise sauce, and plenty of freshly cracked black pepper. Creamy, rich, and ready in minutes, it’s perfect for sandwiches, soft rolls, crackers, jacket potatoes, or quick lunches when the fridge is looking bare. Simple, budget-friendly, and properly satisfying.
Ingredients
- 10 large eggs, hard boiled and peeled
- 50g-75g hollandaise sauce (depending on how creamy you like your egg salad!)
- Freshly cracked black pepper, to taste
Instructions
- Place the hard-boiled eggs in a large bowl and mash with a fork until they reach your preferred texture.
- Using a fork, gently mash the eggs until you reach your preferred texture. I like mine slightly chunky rather than completely smooth.
- Add the hollandaise sauce and stir until evenly combined.
- Season generously with freshly cracked black pepper and stir through.
- Serve immediately or refrigerate until needed.
Notes
- This egg salad proves that simple recipes are often the best. With just three ingredients, every element has to earn its place, and in this case they absolutely do.
- Hollandaise gives this egg salad a richer, silkier texture than mayonnaise. It coats the eggs beautifully and adds a buttery flavour that makes the finished salad feel a little more special without adding any extra effort.
- I like to keep the eggs slightly chunky rather than mashing them completely smooth. The variation in texture makes the salad more interesting and prevents it from becoming paste-like.
- Freshly cracked black pepper isn't just a garnish here. With so few ingredients, it becomes an important part of the flavour profile, adding warmth and a gentle bite that balances the richness of the hollandaise.
- Older eggs are often easier to peel than very fresh eggs. If you've ever struggled with stubborn shells, choosing eggs that are a week or two old can make the job much easier.
- Allow the eggs to cool completely before mixing the salad. Warm eggs can make the texture a little greasy and prevent the hollandaise from coating everything evenly.
- This egg salad is perfect for sandwiches, wraps, jacket potatoes, crackers, or simply eaten straight from the bowl with a fork. No judgement from me.
- If you'd like a creamier egg salad, add a little extra hollandaise. If you prefer a firmer texture, start with less and add only as much as you need.
- Store leftovers in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 2 days.
- Not suitable for freezing.
Nutrition Information:
Yield:
4Serving Size:
1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 255Total Fat: 19gSaturated Fat: 8gUnsaturated Fat: 11gCholesterol: 520mgSodium: 337mgCarbohydrates: 2gFiber: 0gSugar: 1gProtein: 16g
Please note, this nutrition information is to be used as a guide only. Nutrition information isn’t always accurate.
Serve this with
- Spoon it over a warm jacket potato with cracked pepper, spring onions and a little grated cheddar. Add sliced tomatoes or cucumber on the side to keep it fresh.
- Pile it onto toast with sliced tomato, cracked pepper and a handful of watercress. It’s quick, filling and perfect for lunch when I can’t be bothered making anything complicated.
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3 Ingredient Egg Salad & My Deep and Abiding Love of Eggs
I love eggs. Boiled, poached (you can find my vinegar-free poached egg method here), fried, scrambled. I rely on eggs every single day to keep me full, happy, and functioning at work, which is a fairly significant role for one ingredient to play and yet eggs manage it effortlessly. The problem, as anyone who has eaten the same thing daily for months will understand, is that you can eat plain boiled eggs every day for a very long time and then one day, with no warning, get the ick. Not from the eggs themselves, but from the texture of a boiled egg eaten plain. It’s a specific and irrational feeling and it is completely non-negotiable when it arrives.
That’s when I turn to egg salad. Egg salad is the solution to boiled egg fatigue, and this version, with just three ingredients and a total preparation time that could generously be described as minimal, is the one I come back to every time. You can eat it on toast, in a sandwich, or, as I prefer, just straight from the bowl with a fork because it is that good and also I live alone and there are no rules. The hollandaise replaces mayonnaise here, which I know sounds like a slightly strange choice until you taste it, at which point it makes complete sense.
I use an egg cooker from Amazon which means I get the perfect result every single time without thinking about it. You don’t want your yolks dry and chalky in the middle, you want just enough softness left in there to give the egg salad a slightly creamy texture when it’s mashed. The egg boiler takes all the guesswork out of it, and for something I make this frequently, removing the guesswork is genuinely worth the bench space.
Inflammation, Christmas, and a Solo Feast
My inflammation has been genuinely difficult lately, and I need to get my act together about it. I keep eating known triggers and then being surprised by the consequences, which is the kind of thing you’d think I’d have learned by now. I think the honest answer is that I need to just commit to Middle Eastern, British, and Mediterranean foods as my core repertoire, because those cuisines are all reliably safe for me and also happen to be exactly the food I love most. Which is convenient, really.
Winter being here means I’m starting to think about Christmas recipes, which in Australia is its own particular kind of cognitive dissonance. We don’t really do hot Christmas dinners here, not in the traditional British sense, and yet all the recipes I want to make are the classic, traditional sides that belong next to a roast. Last Christmas I made a full Middle Eastern feast for my family, which was wonderful and very much suited to my dietary needs. This Christmas, apparently, my sister is making Chinese food, which I love deeply but which contains a significant number of ingredients I simply cannot eat due to allergies. So I won’t be attending, which is its own kind of thing to sit with.
Lulu and I will have our own little feast instead, which honestly sounds like a perfectly good Christmas to me. He’ll get some nice chicken, I’ll make something beautiful and entirely safe to eat, and we’ll spend the day in the kitchen and on the sofa and it’ll be exactly fine. Better than fine, probably. Lulu is, when he’s not stealing food off the counter or judging me from across the room, very good company.
Why Hollandaise Instead of Mayo
The decision to use hollandaise rather than mayonnaise in this egg salad was instinctive the first time I made it and has been completely vindicated every time since. Hollandaise is richer, more buttery, and has a gentle lemony acidity that mayonnaise doesn’t quite replicate. It coats the egg without making the whole thing heavy, and it has a flavour that feels a little more considered than a standard egg mayo, even though the effort involved is essentially identical.
If you’re making your hollandaise from scratch, this is a perfect use for a batch, though a good quality store-bought hollandaise works absolutely fine here and removes any anxiety about the sauce breaking at the wrong moment. Season generously with pepper, which is doing more than just seasoning in this recipe. The pepper adds a warmth and a slight bite that cuts through the richness of the yolk and the hollandaise and stops the whole thing from being one-dimensional.
Mash the eggs with a fork rather than chopping them. You want some texture and variation in the pieces, a mixture of finer and chunkier bits, rather than a uniform dice that makes every forkful identical. It’s the kind of small thing that makes a simple recipe feel a little more considered, and in a three ingredient dish there’s really nowhere else for the craft to live.
FAQ
What is egg salad?
Egg salad is a classic dish made from chopped or mashed boiled eggs combined with a creamy dressing. It’s most commonly served as a sandwich filling, spooned onto toast, or eaten as a simple side dish. This version uses hollandaise instead of the traditional mayonnaise, which gives it a richer, more luxurious flavour with a lot less effort than it sounds.
Can I use store-bought hollandaise?
Absolutely. A good quality store-bought hollandaise works perfectly here and is the reason this recipe comes together in minutes. If you want to make your own, go for it, but this is meant to be a quick, simple recipe and there is zero shame in reaching for a jar.
How do I get the perfect boiled egg for egg salad?
You want a fully set yolk without that grey-green ring around the outside, which is the tell-tale sign of an overcooked egg. Lower your eggs into gently simmering water and cook for ten to twelve minutes, then transfer immediately to an ice bath to stop the cooking process. Peel once cool and you’ll have perfectly cooked eggs every time.
Ingredient breakdown
Eggs
Large organic free-range eggs, boiled and mashed with a fork rather than chopped, which gives the egg salad a softer, more cohesive texture that holds together when spread rather than a chunky mixture that falls apart. The fork mash leaves some texture rather than turning everything into a paste, which is exactly what you want. Organic eggs have a richer, more deeply flavoured yolk that makes a noticeable difference in something this simple where the egg is doing almost all of the flavour work.
Hollandaise
The binding element and the thing that makes this a three-ingredient egg salad worth talking about. Hollandaise brings richness, a buttery depth, and a gentle lemony acidity that mayonnaise doesn’t have, and it coats the mashed egg in a way that feels more luxurious and considered than a standard egg mayo. Use a good quality hollandaise here because there is nowhere to hide in a three-ingredient recipe.
Black pepper
Freshly cracked and generous. Black pepper and egg is one of those combinations that just works, and in a recipe this stripped back it earns its place as the third ingredient rather than just background seasoning. Crack it coarsely so it has some presence in every bite rather than disappearing into the egg.
Serve this with
- Toasted sourdough or a crusty bread roll, because egg salad on good bread is one of life’s simple pleasures.
- Watercress or rocket tucked alongside for a peppery contrast to the rich, buttery egg.
- As a filling for a classic finger sandwich if you’re doing something a bit more occasion-worthy.
