Creamy Egg Salad with Pickles

A creamy egg salad with pickles recipe you'll love whether you're serving it as an egg salad sandwich or on a bed of lettuce. Such a great variation to the classic egg salad loaded with toppings. It's a WHOLE LOTTA YUM!

 

Give me a choice of lunchtime sandwiches, and a creamy egg salad sandwich will always win over lunch meat. You might be wondering what's so special about adding pickles to egg salad but it's the secret ingredient (along with the pickle juice!) Not only does it add a little crunch, the acidic addition brings out the flavor in the entire dish.

We recently created an easy homemade egg salad with pickle added and took it to a family lunch along with our cranberry pecan chicken salad ~ both were definitely a hit! We served them in salad bowls with rolls on the side, plus arugula leaves and many people enjoyed eating our low carb egg salad recipe without the rolls. It was perfectly balanced with flavor and had a perfectly creamy texture.

Our dill pickle egg salad recipe starts with hard boiled eggs. If you want to learn the easiest hands-off methods for cooking eggs, we prefer Instant Pot hard boiled eggs or air fryer hard boiled eggs.

And if you're looking for unique ways to make egg salad, you'll also love our egg and avocado salad.

Why You'll Love Dill Pickle Egg Salad

• It's super simple! If you already have cooked eggs, the whole recipe comes together in less than 15 minutes.
• Making egg salad with pickles adds an acidic touch that brings out an incredible flavor that otherwise honestly is missing from boring egg salad sandwiches.
• Not only is this a low carb egg salad recipe, but it's keto friendly, gluten-free, and dairy-free too.
• It's easy to customize! Feel free to mix in chopped bacon, caper, or other fresh herbs.

Ingredient list

• boiled eggs - the star of the show, of course! We used large eggs.
• mayonnaise - using a high quality brand makes a world of difference since it's a key ingredient in the salad recipe.
• Dijon mustard - stoneground mustard or yellow mustard work too
• dill pickles - we made dill pickle egg salad with chopped pickles, you can also use pickle relish in its place
• chopped celery
• red onion
• fresh dill - other fresh herb options are chopped parsley, cilantro, rosemary, or basil.
• pickle juice - gives the creamy egg salad its creaminess!
• seasoning - garlic powder, salt, and pepper to taste

** Please see the recipe card at the bottom of the post for the exact quantities **

Diet Adaptions

• Whole30/Paleo-use a Whole30/paleo friendly mayo.
• Keto/Low carb-make sure the mayo you use doesn't add sugar to make a keto egg salad recipe. Make a keto sandwich by using low carb store-bought bread.

Variations

Replace mayo for avocado - did you know you can leave out the mayo or cut back on mayo and get the same creaminess with the addition of mashed avocado? It's a great way to make an even healthier egg salad recipe.

Use Greek yogurt - another way to lighten up egg salad is to replace some of the mayo with light or even non-fat Greek yogurt, we don't recommend a 1:1 swap since yogurt is more tart than mayonnaise.

How to Make Low Carb Egg Salad

Cook the Eggs

Perhaps you bought pre-cooked hard-boiled eggs at the grocery store or already have some in your fridge. If you need to still cook your eggs, here are 3 methods that are super simple.

• Instant Pot eggs - we share an entire blog post on cooking eggs in a pressure cooker. This is our personal favorite method.
• Air fryer eggs - Even quicker than cooking them in water!
• Boiled eggs - the classic method on the stovetop. Add eggs to a saucepan, and cover with 1 inch of cold water. Cover with a lid. Bring to a boil, turn the heat off and let the eggs sit for 12 minutes. Put the eggs in an ice bath to stop them from cooking.

Assemble the Salad

1. Chop the cooled hard-boiled eggs, fine or chunky. Add to a medium size bowl.
2. Add the mayonnaise, mustard, celery, red onion, pickle, pickle juice, and dill. Add salt and pepper to taste. Combine all ingredients.
3. Serve the egg salad on a bed of lettuce or on bread to make sandwiches. Enjoy!

Recipe notes

• While our recipe calls for 2 Tablespoons of chopped pickles, you could of course add even more or you can swap the celery or onion for even more pickles
• The pickle juice is also optional, we love it since a touch of acid enhances the flavor of most recipes.
• The egg salad with pickles recipe can easily be doubled to serve a larger group and won't change the cooking time.

Common Questions

Recipes Using Hard Boiled Eggs

• Egg and avocado salad
• Cobb salad
• Spinach Salad with Hot Bacon Dressing