Next Time You Make Egg Salad, Add This Filipino Condiment For 10X The Flavor

Egg salad's simplicity, the very reason it's often overlooked on most dining tables, can also be its greatest strength. Fold almost anything into that plain base, and you will surely taste the change. One of the most surprising but tasty additions is a condiment all the way from Filipino cuisine. It might not be obvious, but atchara, a Filipino green papaya pickle, is one of the absolute best ingredients to elevate egg salad.

Shredded green papaya strips make up the majority of this pickled food, though you can also add carrots, shallots, radish, bell peppers, bitter melon, pineapple chunks, or raisins. Everything is soaked in a heated brine consisting of vinegar, aromatics, salt, sugar, and pepper. In Filipino cuisine, atchara is a very common side or topping, pairing particularly well with grilled and fried meats. Green papaya gives it a light tartness that is mixed with earthy, sweet, and even peppery notes from the accompanying ingredients. For the most part, however, you will taste the brine and its distinctive punchy tang, nuanced by spicy, sweet, and sour flavors. Atchara's sharp edge punctuates egg salad's rich base, giving this overly familiar dish welcome dimension and depth. And with tender-crisp papaya contrasting the creamy, soft eggs, every forkful is full of delightful textures, too. 

Making atchara at home is pretty straightforward. Prepare the veggies and papaya, simmer the brine, and give it at least two days for the flavors to meld into each other. For time-saving convenience, you can always opt for jars of pre-made atchara instead. From there, it's as simple as tossing a few spoonfuls into a batch of homemade egg salad, or spooning it on top of each serving. It's also one of the best ways to add more flavor to store-bought egg salad, though of course you have less control over the specific spices and seasonings of these options. Just be mindful of the amount since too much of this condiment's tangy spunk might overwhelm the dish's original taste.

Given that atchara is so delicious with grilled meat, you might like it best in a grilled chicken and egg salad, or perhaps one with crispy, smoky bacon bits added to the mix. You can use this egg salad as a topping on steak sandwiches, hot dogs, burgers, etc. As you can tell, atchara makes for quite a flavorful revamp of many cookout staples.

There are so many must-try egg salad dishes from around the world. A classic Filipino version actually includes salted eggs, tomatoes, and even ripe papaya, giving it flavor notes that atchara would enhance perfectly. In fact, atchara-spiked egg salad would pair wonderfully with Filipino meat dishes, like grilled pork marinated in banana ketchup and calamansi juice. Lechon kawali, a traditional Filipino dish featuring deep-fried pork belly, can also do with a bit of atchara egg salad on the side.