How to make the best deviled eggs with mayonnaise, vinegar, and mustard. Plus, suggestions for spicing them up and our best tips for hard boiling eggs. Jump to the Deviled Eggs Recipe
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Do you love deviled eggs as much as we do? We seriously become giddy at the sight of them at a party. We’ve also been known to just make them for the two us at home — just because.
We like to keep things on the savory side and tend to rely on mustard, vinegar or a dash of lemon juice. The thing about deviled eggs is that you can make them just how you like them. If you prefer your deviled eggs to be a little sweeter and love sweet pickles, add some.
Our Easy Deviled Eggs Recipe
I mentioned above that we really like to keep things simple. To me, perfect deviled eggs have mayonnaise, a little vinegar or lemon juice, regular yellow mustard, salt, and pepper. I simply mix the yolks with the ingredients I just listed until smooth then add the filling back into the egg white halves.
Since we have one in our kitchen, I love using our small cookie scoop for adding the deviled eggs mixture into the egg white halves, but a regular spoon works quite well. Another idea is to cut the corner of a resealable plastic bag, fill it with your filling then pipe it into the egg white halves.
Add Even More Flavor For Amazing Deviled Eggs
When we were playing around with this recipe, we both rummaged through our refrigerator and pantry to come up with a bunch of fun toppings we thought would work well for deviled eggs.
For something more classic, you could use smoked or sweet paprika. Or just add a sprinkle of flaky sea salt on top (Joanne’s favorite). Then to liven things up a little you can go crazy with Sriracha, pickled jalapeños, pickled onions, bacon, feta cheese, pickles (sweet or dill), or fresh herbs like chives.
Four Tips for Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs
You can’t have deviled eggs without hard boiled eggs. Here are four tips for making them perfectly, every time.
Use a wider saucepan with a lid. When cooking hard boiled eggs, it’s important that the eggs can fit in one layer. Our recipe below calls for 6 large eggs. A medium saucepan does the trick nicely. If you are planning on doubling the recipe, you might want to consider using a large, wide saucepan instead.
Cover the eggs with cold water, not hot. When cooking hard boiled eggs, we want the water covering the eggs to heat from cold to boiling. By starting with cold water and not hot, the temperature rises slower, preventing the risk of shells cracking and promotes even cooking.
Bring to a boil, cover the pan, cook for 30 seconds then remove from the heat. For hard-boiled eggs, we’re really depending on the heat of the water, not the heat of the burner. The moment we see a rolling boil, we cover the pan with a lid and let it cook for a mere 30 seconds. After that, we slide the pot off the burner completely and let it stand for 12 to 14 minutes, depending on the size of our eggs.
Stop the cooking by plunging into icy water. When you know your eggs are perfectly cooked, you want to stop them from cooking any further as quickly as you can. The easiest way for us to do this is to transfer them into ice water and let them stay there for 5 to 10 minutes. Once cool, you can peel and get to making deviled eggs.
By the way, since posting this deviled eggs recipe, we’ve added a full tutorial for how to cook eggs in a pressure cooker (like an Instant Pot). The eggs turn out perfectly and are easy to peel. If you have a pressure cooker, I highly recommend taking a look.
My Tips for Easy Peel Eggs
If you’ve made deviled eggs or hard boiled eggs before, you’ve probably experienced the occasional stubborn egg that just doesn’t want to peel nicely. There are lots of tricks out there for easy peel eggs. We’ve tried a few, but have found the following tricks to work best for us:
- Try not to use the freshest eggs. Fresher eggs don’t peel as easily so if you have the chance, buy eggs for deviled eggs a few days in advance. (This is not necessary, it just makes things a little easier)
- Cool the eggs completely before peeling. We find this helps a lot, but if you’re still having trouble, crack the cooled egg and place it back into the ice bath. The water sneaks underneath the shell where you cracked it and makes it easier to peel after 5 minutes or so.
Recipe updated, originally posted April 2014. Since posting this in 2014, we have tweaked the recipe to be more clear. – Adam and Joanne
How to Make Perfect Deviled Eggs
- PREP
Since we’ve been making these deviled eggs for some time now, we usually make them by eye. The only thing we measure is the acid (vinegar or lemon juice) since that can make or break things. We also like a little less mustard than most, so you might find you want to add more than we suggest below. Other than that, add what you like — we’ve shared a long list of optional toppings below, but we’re sure you can come up with lots more.
Makes 12 deviled egg halves
Watch Us Make the Recipe
You Will Need
6 large eggs
1/4 cup mayonnaise, see our homemade mayonnaise recipe
1 teaspoon white vinegar, white wine vinegar or lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon yellow mustard
Salt and fresh ground black pepper
Directions
- Cook Eggs
- Make Deviled Eggs
Place the eggs in a single layer in a saucepan and cover with cold water by 1 1/2 inches. Heat over high heat until the water comes to a rolling boil, cover the saucepan with a lid, cook for 30 seconds then remove completely from the heat and let stand for 12 minutes. (This can range from 12 to 14 minutes, depending on the size of your eggs).
Prepare a bowl of ice water. Transfer eggs with a slotted spoon to the ice water and leave for 5 minutes. Crack egg shells and carefully peel them away. If the shells are not easily peeling away from the eggs, place them back into the ice water and try again in 5 minutes.
Gently dry eggs then slice in half, lengthwise. Remove the yolks and add to a medium bowl then arrange the whites on a serving platter.
Mash the yolks into a fine, powdery paste. Stir in the mayonnaise, vinegar, and mustard. Season with salt and a few grinds of black pepper. Stir vigorously until smooth.
Use a small cookie scoop or spoon to evenly distribute the egg yolk filling into the egg whites. (You can also cut a corner from a resealable plastic bag, add the egg yolk filling then use it to pipe into the egg white halves).
Finish with a sprinkle of paprika (classic) or with your favorite toppings (see below for suggestions). We personally like a sprinkle of flaky sea salt or a squirt of Sriracha.
Adam and Joanne’s Tips
- Optional toppings and ingredients: flaky sea salt, smoked or sweet paprika, cooked bacon, pickles, pickled jalapeños, pickled onions, Sriracha, crumbled feta cheese, or fresh herbs — chives or parsley are nice.
- Make Ahead: You can make deviled eggs up to 2 days in advance. The key is to keep the whites and egg yolk filling separate. Wrap the egg white halves well with plastic wrap and keep the egg yolk filling sealed in a resealable plastic bag with all the air squeezed out. Refrigerate everything until you are ready to fill and serve.
- Nutrition facts: The nutrition facts provided below are estimates. We have used the USDA database to calculate approximate values.
If you make this recipe, snap a photo and hashtag it #inspiredtaste — We love to see your creations on Instagram and Facebook! Find us: @inspiredtaste
Nutrition Per Serving: Serving Size 1 deviled egg half / Calories 67 / Protein 3 g / Carbohydrate 0 g / Dietary Fiber 0 g / Total Sugars 0 g / Total Fat 6 g / Saturated Fat 1 g / Cholesterol 94 mg / Sodium 91 mg