What to Do with All Those Easter Eggs

 

Since today is Easter Sunday, you may find yourself with an oversupply of decorated hard-boiled eggs. What to do with them? I suggest making deviled eggs and then burying the eggshells in the garden to help your plants grow.

Dyeing and decorating eggs has traditionally been done at Easter time to celebrate new life. Ukrainians are known for their particularly intricate style of decorating Easter eggs, which are called pysanky. To make pysanky, the artist dips the egg in progressively darker colors of dye and uses a stylus tool to draw designs on the egg with melted beeswax before dipping the egg in each new color. At the end of the process, the beeswax is melted off, revealing a multicolored design. The directions that came in Luba’s Ukrainian Easter Egg Decorating Kit, a very old kit that I inherited from my parents, state that “These eggs are used for decorative purposes and are not to be eaten.” Granted, if you have just spent hours decorating an egg, you probably would want to keep it around for a while. 

But according to Ukrainian-American ethnographer and artist Sofika Zielyk, this wasn’t always the case. Zielyk explained to NPR that after the pysanky were traditionally blessed at Easter time, the eggshells would be buried in gardens to encourage a good harvest or added to cattle feed to boost the animals’ strength. Eggs decorated with the symbol for eternity would be placed inside beehives to ensure the continuous production of honey. Pysanky would also be placed in the four corners of new houses to protect against evil spirits, and children who died during the Easter season would be buried with the decorated eggs so that they could have something to play with in the afterlife.

Zielyk curated an installation of pysanky at the Ukrainian Institute of America in New York City. When the war ends, she plans to bring all the eggs from the exhibit back to her homeland. The eggs will be dug into the fields and placed in people’s houses as they’re being rebuilt. 

Sarah Bachinger has been holding pysanky workshops in Round Lake, New York, and sending the proceeds to humanitarian efforts in Ukraine. You can read more about Bachinger’s organization, Pysanky for Peace, and support the cause here.

Before I made these deviled eggs, I had to look up how this dish that is so commonly associated with Christian Easter got its name. Turns out, it’s all very innocent. The term “deviled” has been used to describe spicy foods containing seasonings like mustard and pepper since about 1786. But deviled eggs go back further than that. The ancient Romans were known to make spiced, boiled eggs, and the idea of mashing up the yolks and stuffing them back into the boiled egg whites became popular in the Middle Ages. Mayonnaise became a key ingredient in deviled eggs in the 1940s. If it makes you feel better, you can follow the lead of Katy Perry’s mom, who has been known to call them “angeled eggs.” For my purposes, I’m calling them Well-Intentioned Deviled Eggs.

Well-Intentioned Deviled Eggs

*Based on recipes from Good and Cheap: Eat Well on $4/Day by Leanne Brown

Base Ingredients:

12 eggs

salt and pepper, to taste

2 tbsp. mayonnaise

Add-ins:

For Classic Deviled Eggs:

2 tbsp. mustard

2 tbsp pickle brine

1-2 tsp. paprika for garnish, optional=

For Lemon-Dill Deviled Eggs:

2 tbsp. lemon juice

1 tbsp. chopped dill

Extra chopped dill for garnish, optional

For Tomato Deviled Eggs:

¼ c. finely chopped tomato

1 tbsp. chopped chives for garnish, optional

For Ramen-Inspired Deviled Eggs (my personal favorite):

2 tbsp. soy sauce

1 tbsp. sweet chili sauce

1-2 chopped green onions for garnish, optional

Instructions:

Place eggs at the bottom of a large pot. Don’t stack them on top of each other or they might crack. Cover with cold water. Place pot over medium heat and bring to boil. Turn off the heat, cover with a tight-fitting lid, and cook for 10 minutes. Fill up a large bowl with cold water. Remove the eggs from the hot water one by one with a slotted spoon and place each one gently in the cold water until they are cool enough to handle. (I learned this trick from my brother Joe.) Peel the eggs. The author of the Good and Cheap cookbook suggests gently rolling each egg across the countertop to crack the shell, and then to peel starting from the bottom. This method works for me. Save the eggshells. Rinse each egg in cool water and set aside.

Slice each egg in half lengthwise. Pop the yolks out with a spoon, and place the yolks in a medium-sized bowl. Set the whites aside for later.

Sprinkle the yolks with salt and pepper and then add the mayo and add-ins of your choice. Mash with a fork until smooth. Spoon the yolk mixture back into the hollow of each egg white. Sprinkle with garnish if you like, and don’t forget to bury the eggshells in your backyard or in some potted plants to help your garden grow.

Sources:

Anastasia Tsioulcas, “These Intricately Decorated Eggs Are Raising Money and Good Wishes for Ukraine,” NPR.org (April 12, 2022).

Maria Scinto, “The Real Reason Deviled Eggs Are Called Deviled Eggs,” Mashed.com (December 5, 2019).