With a toddler at home, I look for any way I can to save time during meal prep. When I boil eggs, I boil a dozen at a time, storing whatever we don’t immediately eat in the refrigerator.
By using a slotted spoon to remove eggs from the pot at different times, I can catch them at various stages of doneness, from soft- to hard-cooked. I use a Sharpie to indicate which is which right on the shell. (To warm up soft-boiled eggs, I drop them in a bowl of hot water for a few minutes. If I’m using the eggs in a dish that’s hot, I add them for a few minutes at the end of cooking.)
When you’ve got a stash of perfectly cooked boiled eggs in your fridge, you’re never far away from a meal (or a meal enhancement). Of course, you can eat them whole, make deviled eggs, or cut them into wedges or slices to garnish any number of salads, but that’s only the start.
Here are a few ways I use them:
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Quarter them and use to garnish stewed vegetable and bean dishes, and vegetable- and tofu-based stir-fries. Canned chickpeas stewed with spinach, tomatoes, smoked paprika, garlic and olive oil is in the regular rotation for us. Sometimes we add sliced Spanish chorizo as well.
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Press hard-boiled eggs through the large holes of a box grater and add them to chopped salads, or use as a topping for grilled vegetables dressed with a vinaigrette.
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My favorite egg salad is a couple of boiled eggs, a dollop of mayo, diced celery and red onions (or sliced scallions), a squeeze of lemon juice and zest, and some minced fresh parsley or chives, all squashed together between my (clean) fingers in a bowl. This is a particularly toddler-friendly recipe.
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If you’re cooking fresh or instant ramen, add a precooked soft or medium-boiled egg (either still in the shell or peeled) directly to the boiling noodle water for the last 90 seconds of cooking, which warms the egg back up. Peel under cool running water, split in half, and garnish your noodles with it.
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Place a warm soft-cooked egg on top of sautéed or braised greens on a corn tortilla. Crush the egg with the back of a fork for creamy-yolked tacos that beat the pants off scrambled-egg tacos.
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Stir a couple of refrigerator-cold, soft-boiled eggs into a bowl of very hot rice (I usually microwave day-old rice for this) with a dash of soy sauce and a pinch of salt. Beat the mixture with chopsticks until the whites are broken into small chunks and the yolks have coated the rice in a creamy sauce for a heartier take on Japanese tamago kake gohan. Sprinkle with crushed nori or furikake.
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Roughly chop a couple of hard-boiled eggs. Combine a half-cup of roughly chopped niçoise olives, a small minced shallot, a big pinch of minced parsley, a half-dozen chopped anchovy fillets, the juice of a lemon and a quarter-cup of extra-virgin olive oil for a chunky vinaigrette with the flavors of a niçoise salad. Use it to dress small, waxy boiled potatoes, blanched green beans or diced cherry tomatoes.
