Making Vegan Egg Salad

I've been a vegetarian for several years now. I'm also working on eating more vegan things. I don't like to say "I'm a vegan" just yet, because I do still eat dairy and eggs. I'm finding those things a lot harder to turn my back on than it was to give up meat. But when I gave up meat, it wasn't like I just one day said, "I'm never eating meat again." I just chose vegetarian things as frequently as possible, until eventually it was very easy to make the commitment to saying, "I'm a vegetarian." So I'm trying to do the same thing with veganism, by just choosing more and more vegan options.

One of my all time favorite foods is egg salad. When I was a kid, we used to eat egg salad on potato chips, like a dip. Did anyone else ever do that, or was it just us? It was so delicious... the salty potato chip complimented the egg salad perfectly. Egg salad is one of the things that I'd be so sad to give up. So I decided to try making a vegan version.

What I decided to use instead of eggs was tofu. I know a lot of people have bad feelings about tofu. But, have you ever even tasted it? It is difficult to be able to say, "I don't like tofu," because it doesn't really have a strong flavor. It just soaks up whatever you cook it in or mix it with. It is mostly used as a filler, or for texture, and for nutritional value, rather than for its taste.

Here is my chunk of tofu. I used the firm kind. Because I was making this recipe up as I went along, I didn't really measure... I just cut off a chunk. In the background, Spongebob and Patrick cheered me on.

I chopped the tofu up into little pieces, similarly to the way I would have chopped up a hardboiled egg if I was using one.

A lot of the vegan egg salad sandwich recipes I've seen online call for you to mix up your own vegan mayo. But I bought some vegan mayo at the store because I'm lazy bones and wanted to keep my recipe simple for now.

I have never tried vegan mayo before. I didn't have high hopes for it. I have to admit that I don't completely trust vegan peoples' taste in food. Have you ever had a vegan person tell you how delicious something is, and then you try it, and you're like, "Pphhthhhth!" Especially because a lot of the vegan people I've known in the past thought "good" was a synonym for "spicy." However, I was willing to give this a try. I put some on my spoon and tasted it. It was not bad! Not bad at all! The texture was very creamy, just about exactly the same as regular mayonnaise. The taste was a little different... maybe a little sweeter than mayo. It was like a cross between mayo and Miracle Whip.

If you're interested in seeing the nutritional facts and ingredients, here they are. I compared it with the ingredients and nutritional information on my jar of regular mayonnaise, and found that they are very close. The main difference in the ingredients is that the regular mayo uses eggs, and the vegan mayo replaces the eggs with starch and 2% or less of some other random ingredients. The vegan mayo, for some reason, has a lot more sodium than regular mayo. What is it with sodium lately? Also, what on earth does "Best if used by: see jar" mean? Aren't I looking at the jar?

I added a big spoonful of the vegan mayo to my chopped up tofu. Again, I didn't measure. Measuring is for people who know what they're doing! 

Do you like mustard in your egg salad? I love it! Some people do not. But I love mustard. I loved mustard even when I did not like ketchup. Here is the mustard I used. It is just ordinary, store brand mustard. All mustard is vegan. At least, the yellow stuff is. I don't know about the fancy stuff like Grey Poupon.

I added a few squirts of mustard. Then I stirred it all up. I also chopped up some celery. I know a lot of people don't like celery in their egg salad. I like it. I don't always add it, but since I had some celery on hand, I thought, why not?

So, that's pretty much it for the preparation part of it. The recipes I found online had different ingredients  such as nutritional yeast or various spices. I wanted to keep it as close to my usual recipe for egg salad, though, for comparison sake. So I just left it like this, and spread it on my bread. The bread I was using, by the way, was not vegan. I have not yet tried vegan bread. If I see it at Safeway next time I'm there, maybe I'll buy some. 

The next step, obviously, was to spread it onto my bread. 

Then I cut my sandwich into four little squares like a little kid, because I just felt like it for some reason. Finally, I took it into the living room to eat it. 

The verdict? It was pretty good. It was close to regular egg salad. The texture was a little off. I think what I need to do next time is chop the tofu and celery more finely, and also make sure the tofu and celery are as dry as possible before I add them. I think that would help with the texture. I'd also play around with the flavor a little more. I've sometimes added vinegar to my egg salad sandwiches, which I like a lot because I like vinegar. Maybe I'll try that next time. 

The egg salad did not, by the way, pass the Lily test. The Lily test is when I let my dog, Lily, try something. She likes hard boiled eggs. She likes the yolk better. If I give her an egg white, she usually spits it out. But she'll usually eat egg salad if given the chance. I tried to give her a piece of tofu with the mayo/mustard mixture on it. She sniffed it and then gave me an exasperated look. 

Here is my egg salad sandwich, as part of this somewhat incomplete lunch.