By Katie Hoffman
It’s the post-Easter dilemma in many households. What in the world so I do with all of these boiled eggs?
Egg salad is a great idea—or a chopped boiled egg in a fresh green salad. But what about exercising your artistic bone, and making some art for the supper table?
These Gloriously Beautiful Deviled Pickled Eggs will let you wow your friends and family with both your artsy flair and your culinary prowess. (You don’t have to tell them that this is easy. Just let ‘em be impressed!)
I recommend dyeing your eggs four at a time. That’s how many will fit easily in a wide-mouth pint canning jar, which is what I used for creating the pink border.
First, find a jar of pickled beets. (I use my own home-canned beets, but store-bought will work too.) Drain the pickle liquid into a wide-mouth Mason pint jar. Taste the liquid to see if you think it needs a little extra vinegar. Mine did, so I added a little white vinegar to the juice before steeping the eggs in it.
Peel four eggs and leave them whole. Drop them down into the beet pickle juice, put a lid on the jar, and let them steep in the refrigerator for about 4 hours. It’s a good idea to stir them gently every now and then, or they’ll develop lighter spots where they touch the sides of the jar.
This beet juice bath will give them a beautiful pink edge around the outside when you slice them in half. And who knew that it was so easy? Careful, though--don’t let them go too long or the beet juice will penetrate further into the egg and dye the yolks. They’ll turn orange and spoil the effect.
Repeat this process with four more whole boiled eggs until you have pickled the number you plan to “devil” later.
Once your eggs are all beautifully dyed magenta, you proceed as you would with any deviled egg recipe:
Slice the eggs in half and remove the yolks to a separate bowl.
Rinse the whites gently to remove the crumbs of the yolk, and blot them dry. You can also turn them flat-side-down on a paper towel or clean dishcloth while deviling the yolks.
Fill and garnish
Use your usual deviled egg recipe, or make one up on the fly. All you really need to devil the yolks is mustard (you can use any kind, including dry, to taste), mayonnaise, and some sort of pickle. If you lean toward a sweet taste, use chopped sweet pickles or relish. If you lean toward savory, use capers. Add these ingredients sparingly—a teaspoon or so at a time—at first, tasting the filling as you go to make sure that you don’t overdo anything.
NOTE: Soaking the eggs in the beet juice plus vinegar often means that you can cut back a little on the pickle element of the recipe. You can use the pickled beets, chopped fine, as the relish part of this, but it turns the yolks a funny color.
You can prepare these about 24 hours ahead of time by boiling and dyeing the eggs, slicing them, and making the filling. Store the sliced whites in an airtight container and do the same with the filling. Pull them out just before serving to fill and garnish. I use a regular spoon to fill the eggs, but you can be fancy and pipe the filling in, too, if you like.
Garnish!
For the eggs in these pictures, I garnished with a tiny bit of parsley, a piece of pickled beet, and redbud blossoms. Any edible flower will do—use your imagination!
NOTE: The lovely egg green dish which has garnered so many compliments on social media (thank you!) was purchased at a yard sale for $1.00. Keep your eyes open at flea markets and junk shops for a dish that suits your fancy, and enjoy making and serving these gloriously beautiful and tasty deviled pickled eggs.
Comments