The incredible, edible deviled egg has all kinds of naughty and nice potential upgrades. Secret ingredients like cream cheese, dill, and bacon always improve a deviled egg, and you can even fry them for some of the best darn deviled eggs of your life. Of course, no party snack or app would be complete without a little bit of celebrity chef input, and so we turn to Ina Garten for a tasty way to make those whites and yolks even better.
Garten uses a brilliant bit of smoked salmon in her deviled eggs as though to conjure the swirling plumes of the underworld — or at least capture a bit of that tasty seafood salinity. She finely chops skinless soaked salmon before combining it with egg yolks, sour cream, cream cheese, mayonnaise, lemon juice, chives, salt, and pepper in a mixer. Garten pipes the creamy mix back into the egg whites with a pastry bag in a Food Network clip posted on Facebook, but you can modify many parts of her preparation to comport with your presentation preference, and even the tools in your own kitchen.
Smoked salmon deviled eggs other ways
Ina Garten’s smoked salmon deviled eggs sure pack a nice, bright flavor, but they also obscure the salmon enough that it, too, almost becomes a secret ingredient. For a super pared-down interpretation, you can stick with a more standard deviled egg combination of yolks, mustard, salt, and pepper, arrange the mixture back in the whites, and top each egg with a nice folded slice of smoked salmon just large enough to barely cover the surface.
Now, Garten’s pastry piping does certainly affect a more polished, professional finish, which you can still certainly achieve even when adding salmon after the fact. What this modification does not allow for, however, is the lovely salmon roe garnish that Garten uses to finish her deviled eggs. One workaround when adding salmon on top is to spoon the lovely pearls of roe into the egg white shells before redistributing the yolk blend. You won’t get the same upscale visual, but this minor alteration still leaves you with the roe’s bright, bursting salinity as a bit of a surprise.
