Deviled Eggs

Picture the scene.  It's Memorial Day and I'm planning to make guac for a party.  Head into the grocery store and find nothing but rock hard avocados.  It's time for Plan B. Ok, what can I whip up that will be just as popular as guac?  Aha, deviled eggs.  Brilliant.  Look up a few recipes on my phone, come up with the consensus on an ingredient list, and head home.  And then I remember that as much as I love eating them, I hate making deviled eggs.  I always get the timing wrong on boiling them, ending up either too hard or too soft.  And I have bad luck with peeling them, scared for life by the time I made a batch of 18 and spent hours picking off shells piece by piece.  I knew that I needed to find a rock solid recipe to back up my endeavors.


Luckily I had recently picked up a copy of Chrissy Tiegen's Cravings, for what I assumed would be pure food porn purposes.  The recipe for Secretly Spicy Deviled Eggs caught my eye.  I knew that my intended audience wouldn't go for spicy, secret or otherwise, so the Sriracha and jalapenos were omitted, leaving the classic deviled eggs that I was looking for.   I followed the directions to the letter and came away with a perfect batch of deviled eggs.

Ingredients
(Adapted from Chrissy Teigen's Cravings)

• one dozen large or jumbo eggs
• Salt for boiling
• ½ cup mayo
• 2 teaspoons yellow mustard
• 1 tablespoon pickle relish
• salt and pepper to taste
• paprika for garnish (optional)

Method

Begin by placing six eggs in a pot and filing with enough water to cover the eggs by at least an inch.  I made a dozen eggs in two pots.

Add a tablespoon of salt, heat to high, and cover.

Let the pots come to a boil, then turn off the heat and let sit for 9 minutes (I had jumbo sized eggs, and the yolks were a little underdone, though not fatal to the recipe.  After further experiments, I determined that 11 minutes was a solid cooking time for jumbo eggs).

In the meantime, fill a bowl with ice and water.

 Measure out the mayo, mustard, and pickle relish.

Remove the eggs from the pans and place into the ice bath and let them chill for five minutes.

Now the hard part.  I rinsed each egg after peeling to make sure that no shell fragments remained.

Slice the eggs in half and slip out the yolks.

Mix the yolks with the mayo, mustard, relish, and a dash of salt and pepper.

Fill the eggs using the method of your choice - star tip if you're feeling fancy, plain ol' spoon if you're not.

Sprinkle lightly with paprika and party on.