Yahoo Sports The Extra Creamy Addition That Makes Polish Egg Salad Unique
When you think of Polish food, dishes like pierogi, paczki, or haluski might come to mind, but today we're deep-diving into another less common dish that the Polish do equally well. We're talking about egg salad, which arguably gets less hype than macaroni salad at backyard barbecues. Likewise, potato salad has well-known French, German, and Korean versions, all of which are drastically different. But egg salad is far from a one-trick pony, as Polish foodies know, and this take on the classic is anything but boring.
The standard egg salad of most American picnics is some iteration of chopped hard-boiled eggs and chives married in a creamy mayo-mustard-vinegar medium. So what makes Polish egg salad unique? Effectively, just one thing: It relies on cream cheese instead of calling for mayo. Specifically speaking, softened cream cheese is mashed with softened butter in a separate bowl to create a rich paste, which is then added to a mixture of chopped hard-boiled eggs, onion, and fresh parsley. The result is a tangy, filling bite with a luxuriously rich mouthfeel and stiffer texture. The best part? You can pretty much use your go-to egg salad recipe and just swap the one ingredient to make it. Feel free to customize and season with other ingredients however you see fit.
Read more: The Absolute Best Ingredients To Elevate Egg Salad
Yes Please, Cream Cheese
Poland is a midway point between the East and the West — both geographically and culturally. Polish cuisine is an entity unto itself, but it also totes an amalgam of influences from Jewish, German, Russian, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Belarusian, and Mongolian gastronomic sensibilities. With its trademark emphasis on ingredients like cabbage, potatoes, and dairy, the name of the game is "comfort food". It's perhaps no wonder, then, that rich cream cheese is the secret ingredient to Polish foodies' extra creamy egg salad. It's often used to substitute the mayo completely, whereas in some recipes it's used in addition.
Serve creamy Polish egg salad as a side at your next summer picnic or fall tailgate. For a light lunch, it would make for a killer sandwich between two pieces of rye bread with an iceberg lettuce leaf. You could serve it on buttery crackers as an hors d'oeuvre, and it'll hold up better structurally than American egg salad thanks to the stiffer cream cheese. Cut out tiny circles of plush white bread to make Polish egg salad into tea sandwiches. For an elevated wholesome snack for kiddos, it could be scooped up with celery stalks, baby carrots, briny cornichons, or pretzels. Try using creamy Polish egg salad as a filling in stuffed bell peppers. It'd even be great on an everything bagel.
Read the original article on Tasting Table.
