Deviled Eggs: An Exercise in Fat

A lot of people don't like hard-boiled eggs, it's true. Some people simply don't like the texture, which is sad, because their lives are incomplete and they'll never really be happy. Most often though, people complain about the cholesterol and fat content, which is why deviled eggs are so great, since they let us expand on the existing fat and cholesterol content by adding additional fat and cholesterol. Oh, and salt.

First, of course, you need to make hard-boiled eggs, and while I assume anyone who spends any time in their kitchen who isn't a pontificating vegan knows how to do this, I'm including a method anyway. It is foolproof, because all methods for making hard-boiled eggs are foolproof. They're fucking hard-boiled eggs, not fucking demi-glace.

What you will need:

7* eggs**
A saucepan with a lid
A stove
Running water

* Since one will most likely get fucked up somehow, this leaves you with six, for a dozen deviled eggs.
** It is best to use old eggs for this, since they peel more easily. This is science.

Put the eggs in the pan and cover them with about an inch of water. If there isn't room for an inch of water, get a different pan - continuing to fill past the volume of the pan will not help.

Incorrect

Put that on the stove and turn it to high. It's going to take a while for the water to boil, obviously, so go do something else for a while. That way, you'll be halfway through the next episode of whatever you're watching on Netflix these days and suddenly you'll say "oh shit! Those things have been boiling for who knows how long!" This is the appropriate amount of time. When you run into the kitchen and see the water boiling, turn the burner off, and cover.

You do have a lid, right?

Then, with the aid of the timer-enabled device of your choice, let the eggs sit in the water for exactly eighteen minutes. Any longer and they will explode; any shorter and they will cause nightmarish diarrhea. Because of this, you're going to want to watch the timer verrrrry closely.

Sure, it went down one second, but that's no guarantee of anything.

That is all bullshit, of course. But eighteen minutes seems to work pretty well. After the allotted amount of time, give or take, carefully pour off the hot water while simultaneously running cold water into the pan. This is a great way to waste water and cool the eggs at the same time.

If you're really worried about it, and you're one of those super-rich people who has an ice maker, you can waste water that way instead. Anyway, the goal here is to stop the eggs cooking, not stop all Brownian motion, so they can still be a little warm. Then put 'em in a bowl and chill 'em until your fridge reeks of farts.

Seriously your fridge will smell like room-clearing dogfarts.

Now the fun part.

First you have to peel the eggs. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to do this, despite the heartfelt attestations of about a million YouTube video creators. Go ahead and look. Try whatever you want. It's just a pain in the ass and you get better at it with practice. Do your best. If some of the whites come out a little janky-looking, remind any critics that they're eating eggs stuffed with eggs, and maybe they should shut the hell up.

And if any are broken completely, asshole dogs like this one will be happy to dispose of them for you.

What You Will Need Now

6 Peeled, Hard-Boiled Eggs
2 1/2 tbsp Mayonnaise*
1 1/2 tbsp Fancy-Pants Mustard
1 tsp Dried Dill
Paprika
Celery Salt
Salt
Pepper
An unspecified amount of Sour Cream*

* Many people don't like mayonnaise or sour cream, so I use a little of both. So if someone says "Oh, there isn't mayo in here, is there?" I can say "It's mostly sour cream." And vice versa.

You can use whatever mustard you want, but the fancier-pantsier, the better, so long as it is not Dijon. I don't know how that would turn out, but I bet it would be disgusting. My fancy-pants mustard of choice has Peppadew peppers in it, which only grow in a particular part of South Africa, and the consumption of which probably somehow contributes to horrific, ongoing, institutional racism in that country. But damn, they're tasty.

Our slimy ingredients. Today we're using Crema Mexicana because the sour cream was expired and had mold in it. Hooray!

Our spicy things. Yes, the celery salt is some handmade, artisanal bullshit. We bought it at a farmer's market in a cute little town on the North Coast of California, and the label is printed in fucking Papyrus. We are dicks. The salt is just salt.

Before you get started, you're going to want to get out your handy deviled egg carrier, as it's useful for preparation, transportation, and presentation. Wait, you don't have a deviled egg carrier? What are you, a fucking peasant?

You don't actually need this. We do.

Cut the eggs in half and squeeze all the little yolky bits into a big bowl, like bigger than you think you would need. Don't worry if they have infamous "green ring" around them, since they're going to be all squished anyway. Start smooshing the egg yolks and keep going until they're essentially a a coarse powder. I like to use a fork for this job, but feel free to use whatever tool you're comfortable with.

There are a variety of options.

More smooshed than this, so this picture is useless.

Add the mayonnaise and mustard and keep smashing until you've made a rough paste. Then add the spicy things. the salt, pepper, paprika, and celery salt (douchy or otherwise) should just be a pinch or so each. You can always add more later. Keep smooshing until the paste is smooth.

Smoosh, smoosh. Notice the fork.

At this point, keep adding something (like the Crema or sour cream) until you've about doubled the volume of the original yolks, and the filling is creamy. This will give you enough to put heaping servings of the filling on each egg half. For this job, I usually just use a spoon, but again, you have options. If you have a pastry bag, and really want to wash egg yolk and mayonnaise out of it, then by all means, pipe that stuff in there instead. It will look prettier, but it won't taste any better. 

Not a pastry bag.

After that, you're pretty much done, but I like to do a final shake of paprika on the whole lot of them, because it looks fancy without having to wash three kinds of fat out of a pastry bag. Did I mention that using a spoon is just fine?

Paprika is the happiest spice in the world.