One fine summer evening, I watched my neighbors at our community fish fry gobble up the platter of deviled eggs I'd set on the table with all the other side-dish treats.
When the host hollered, "Come and get it" and folks lined up, I lifted the cover from the dozen deviled eggs, then sat back in my lawn chair and watched.
Those eggs were gone before guest number 13 ever got close to that plate of tasty treats.
'Tis the season for fish-fry get-togethers, picnics and neighborhood potlucks, with smaller crowds this summer sitting farther apart. Saunter into the party with a batch of deviled eggs, and all you'll be carrying home is an empty plate.
They're not only one of the planet's most delicious summer treats, they're easy and quick to make. Don't like doing dishes? Make deviled eggs and you'll only dirty up one pan.
Here at the shack-ri-la, we're big time tinkerers in the kitchen, adding this or that to suit our fancy until a dish is over-the-top delicious. That includes our deviled eggs.
Fix them like we do here at the shack and be ready to wow your friends at the next fish fry. Here's how to fix a dozen delicious deviled eggs.
First you'll need perfect hard-boiled eggs. Take six eggs, put them in a pan and cover the eggs with cold water. Put the pan of eggs and cold water on a burner and turn it on high.
When the water comes to a rolling boil, turn off the burner, put a lid on the pan and let the pan sit on the burner for 12 minutes. Then transfer the eggs into a bowl of ice cold water to cool for several minutes.
Peel the eggs and cut each egg in half width wise. Carefully scoop the yolk out of each egg half and put the yolks in a bowl. Crush the yolks with a fork.
Now it's time to get creative. At the shack-ri-la we add about one-half teaspoon of mayo and the same amount of Miracle Whip to the bowl of crushed yolk. Then we squeeze in a squirt of mustard, a squirt of barbecue sauce and stir everything together until it's well blended.
Your mixture will likely be too thick, so add a bit more mayo, Miracle Whip or mustard until the mixture is smooth. Other optional ingredients you might add to the bowl are pickle relish, sweet or dill, and finely diced onion.
Spoon a bit of the mixture into the cavity of each egg half. Sprinkle a little paprika on each one, mainly for color. Just for grins sometime, try some chili powder instead of paprika on an egg or two just to see how you like it.
Now you can fancy up your deviled eggs with an olive or mushroom slice on top of each one. You'll want to take a picture for the cover of "Southern Living."
The hardest part of making deviled eggs might be peeling them. Here's a great trick. Tap the bottom of a hard-boiled egg on the counter and remove some of the shell, about the size of a quarter. Tap the top of the egg and take off some shell, about the size of a dime.
Now you can blow the egg right out of its shell. Take a deep breath and blow hard on the small end of the egg, like blowing a dart of of a blow gun. Presto, the egg will pop cleanly out of the shell right into your hand.
When I first saw this on You Tube, I figured it was trick photography. But friends and neighbors, it works like a charm to make fixing deviled eggs even easier.
Flip Putthoff can be reached at [email protected]