Egg salad without mayo is a light twist on a classic egg salad recipe. A few seasonings, including cumin and paprika, jazz up the sauce, while capers bring the briny, acidic element that egg salad needs. If you missed it, we posted our dill pickle egg salad a few weeks ago. It’s so good you’ll want to double the recipe to enjoy all week!
This is ideal for anyone looking for a healthier, low-calorie egg salad recipe. It’s gluten-free, low-carb, keto, and can be dairy-free with an easy swap. Continue reading for how to make egg salad without mayonnaise, easy swaps, and be sure to add this to your collection of budget-friendly meals, healthy lunches, and high-protein recipes!
Give me all the unique egg salad recipes! While I love classic combinations, it’s fun to experiment with different flavors and textures. This easy egg salad, made without mayo, is a staple in our house, and I love making it for our high-protein meal prep. Egg salad, in general, lasts several days and can be enjoyed all week as a quick meal at home, a healthy lunch at work, or as a light snack. However you want it, be sure to add this to your rotation of egg recipes and 10-minute easy meals!
Egg Salad Without Mayo
The surprising ingredient is sour cream. It works beautifully as a substitute for mayonnaise. Sour cream has a neutral flavor that complements the other ingredients well. If you love sour cream as much as we do, you’ll love my sour cream sauce. We make a lot of egg salad in this house, and this one is one of our favorites. We didn’t miss the mayonnaise at all!
Most people prefer Greek yogurt or cottage cheese, but after trying several variations, my family preferred sour cream. However, cottage cheese egg salad is delicious, and if I didn’t have sour cream, that would be my second choice. Like sour cream, cottage cheese has a neutral flavor. If the texture of cottage cheese gives you the ick, blend it until it’s smooth like I did in my high-protein tuna pasta salad.
Main Ingredients
- Sour cream. This is the star of the show, so it matters what you use. In the absence of mayonnaise, we need the additional fat of full-fat sour cream. I love Fage and Daisy 4% milkfat. If you’re concerned about calories, full-fat sour cream has significantly fewer calories than mayonnaise.
- Hard-boiled eggs. Obviously. Use your favorite method for making them. I posted mine on Instagram if you’d like to watch it.
- Sauce ingredients. Every great egg salad recipe starts with a killer sauce! Without the mayo, this egg salad benefits from warm, earthy spices like cumin and paprika. Combined with creamy sour cream, additional seasoning, scallions, and capers, it is utter perfection.
- Capers. Little salt bombs of joy! In place of lemon juice or vinegar, capers add a briny, acidic flavor to the sauce that helps cut through the richness of the egg yolks and sour cream.
How To Make Egg Salad Without Mayo
- Add the sour cream, seasonings, Dijon, scallions, and capers to a medium-sized mixing bowl.
- Stir well and add additional caper juice to thin out the sauce, if needed. * see notes
- Add the eggs and gently fold them in. I use a small spatula to avoid breaking them up too much.
- Taste the salad and adjust the salt and pepper. (The capers & juice provided enough for us)
Serve with crackers for dipping, eat it with a spoon, or enjoy it with lettuce cups for a lighter, gluten-free option.
Tips For Success
- Caper juice is needed to thin out the sauce, but it’s very salty. I added three teaspoons, but you may like it with one teaspoon. Add a little a time until it tastes good to you.
- Sour cream is the main ingredient in this egg salad without mayo, but if you don’t have it, you could use Greek yogurt, mayonnaise, cottage cheese, or any combination of the three.
- It’s crucial to use full-fat sour cream for this recipe. Without mayonnaise, it provides the extra fat the recipe needs. If you’re concerned about calories, sour cream is much lower in calories than mayonnaise.
- I’ve tried every method imaginable for making hard-boiled eggs easier to peel. After trying all of them, I’ve found one thing to be consistently true. Fresh eggs do not peel as well as older eggs. Use the oldest eggs in your refrigerator to ensure easier peeling.
- The eggs and scallions were already prepped and ready to go as part of my weekly ingredient prep, and that hour of time once a week allows me to throw together meals like this in minutes.
Ingredients Swaps
- If you like mayonnaise in your egg salad, then by all means, cut back on some of the sour cream and add a little mayonnaise! The reason there are millions of egg salad recipes online is that it’s versatile.
- If you don’t have capers, Kalamata or green olives can be used as a substitute. And if you don’t like capers or olives, a little lemon juice or vinegar would also work well. My first choice would be red wine vinegar, and my second would be apple cider vinegar; however, it’s a matter of personal preference. Recipes are guides and not rules.
How Long Is Egg Salad Without Mayo Last?
- Once you peel hard-boiled eggs, it shortens their shelf life. Egg salad is best enjoyed within three days for optimal flavor. It will start to separate as it sits, and the longer it sits, the greater the separation will become. You can technically eat it for up to five days, but the quality starts to decline after three.
Is This Budget-Friendly?
- Since we’re all about saving money around here, egg salad is one of our favorite budget-friendly meal options. Before you come at me about the price of eggs, hear me out. I buy expensive, high-quality eggs and avocado mayonnaise, both of which are pricey. The total cost of this recipe was $3.83, which includes the cost of seasonings. That averages out to $1.92 per serving, and you can lower the cost with cheaper ingredients.
- Depending on the add-ons, you could stretch this to serve more people, making it even more affordable. Two eggs with mayonnaise, salt, and pepper aren’t nearly as filling as two eggs with celery and scallions or pickles. Serve on bread over a bed of lettuce or with crackers to make it more filling. High volume, low-cost filler ingredients are a great way to stretch a recipe and save money.
If you’ve tried my egg salad without mayo or any recipe on my site, please leave a comment below!
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Egg Salad Without Mayo
Equipment
Ingredients
- 5 hard-boiled eggs
- 1/3 cup full fat sour cream
- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- 1 scallions thinly sliced
- 2 - 3 teaspoons capers drained + juice
- 1/4 teaspoon paprika
- 1/4 teaspoon cumin
- 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/4 teaspoon onion powder
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- Optional: extra scallion tops for garnish
Instructions
- Add the sour cream, seasonings, Dijon, scallions, and capers to a mixing bowl.
- Stir well and add a teaspoon of caper juice to thin out the sauce. * see notes
- Chop the eggs to your desired size and add to the sauce.
- Using a flexible spatula and gently fold the eggs in until well combined.
- Taste the salad and adjust the salt and pepper. (the capers and caper juice added enough salt for us)
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