Chickpea “Egg” Salad

Summer Picnic Food; Breaking up with eggs + a dissertation on mayonnaise

As soon as the sun starts to warm the air and promise of summer is approaching, I want to play outside and eat simple food.  Food that reminds me of summer picnics and paddleboarding at the lake is what I begin itching to create.   

I’ve been feeling that the perfect Fresh Life post to kick off the summer picnic or lazy leftover lunch season is one of my favorite childhood salads, the iconic egg salad. I love it on crackers, scooped with cucumbers, radishes or peppers.  I love a heavy grind of black pepper and the crunch of sweet pickles and celery.

I broke up with eggs as a further dietary refinement to treat my MS. That dietary shift inspired me to create recipes that would be delicious and playful substitutes for the oeuf. I turned to a childhood classic for my egg makeover - Grammy’s egg salad, by embracing the humble chickpea, ceci, channa, garbanzo.

Chickpeas are a wonder legume. The properties of the starch make it incredibly versatile in cooking and baking. Confirmingly, the recent viral online craze of chickpea “water” or liquid from canned chickpeas - called Aquafaba, being whipped into pretty amazing egg substitutes, yielding velvety mayonnaise and perfect meringue. Vegans and the egg averse rejoiced! And the food giants stepped in to cash out. Cause of course, chickpeas are cheaper than chicken>eggs.

By subbing chickpeas for both the egg in the salad, and the egg in the mayonnaise, while keeping all the emotional flavor notes of the original egg salad, I gotta say, I think this is almost… better? As in quicker and easier than boiling and peeling a dozen eggs, with a satisfying toothsomeness not achieved with chopped eggs that can quickly yield to mush. Sunny yellow, crunchy with celery, onion and sweet pickles, with just enough black pepper to balance the tangy sweetness. Should you desire to make your own chickpea mayonnaise - aka. Fabanaise, there are many recipes online that are suited for home creation.

Here, feel free to use whatever mayonnaise you like or prefer. If you are vegan or egg-averse, there are some good brands out there that I’d like to highlight. As the vegan craze continues, there are many plant based mayo’s coming onto the market. Which, in the commercial food production industry, is probably better than the use of what I would name for my kids as “sad eggs” from industrialized egg operations.

Though, plant based mayo’s are not all the same. Read the labels. Ya know, Hellmans is cashing in on the plant based craze with no interest in your health and leveraging their brand value in the conventional food world to claim market share in the natural wellness sphere.

To further bring home the point, currently at Target, you can purchase their iconic mayo from sad eggs and GMO soybean oil for $4.29. You could also opt for their Plant Based Alternative, made with GMO canola oil and chemically derived modified food starch for $5.49. Get it? Cheaper to make and they charge you more for your perceived elevated dietary choices.

What are the manufacturers using to replace the thickening ability of eggs to form an emulsion and with what kind of oil? Many use chemically modified food starch and toxic GMO seed oils. I generally don’t consume a lot of mayo based foods, so I don’t get all worked up about the common, healthier commercial use of sunflower oil here. I’d rather moan in delight at the yumminess and am more interested in what ingredient is replacing the egg and steering clear of canola, soy, modified food starch and bullshit healthy claims from industrial food giants.