When cooking for one person on a college student’s budget, it’s important to buy groceries carefully so that nothing goes to waste. A great way to do so is to build up a repertoire of recipes that use a few key versatile ingredients. That way, you don’t have to buy specialty items for each dish and then watch them go bad in the back of your fridge when you can’t find another use for them. Egg salad is an excellent recipe for this purpose, since it’s composed entirely of ingredients that can shine in many different combinations.

Our favorite way to eat egg salad is to pair it with sliced tomato, cucumber and lettuce to make a great sandwich on a toasted English muffin. The cucumber is light, crispy and refreshing, a great counterpoint to the rich creaminess of the egg salad. And you can use the lettuce as a crunchy topper that makes an open-faced sandwich more manageable to eat without getting your hands dirty. Altogether, this is a simple, practical meal that can be the high point of your afternoon.

Serves: 2

Ingredients:

4 eggs

1/2 stalk of celery

3 Tbsp mayonnaise

1/2 tsp mustard

Salt

Pepper

Toasted English muffin

Sliced tomato

Sliced cucumber

Lettuce

Process:

Hard-boiling Eggs

1.  Place your eggs in a small pot and fill the pot with cool water. Starting with cool water helps prevent the eggshells cracking.

2.  Bring the water to a boil, then remove the pot from the heat and cover it. Let it stand for 15 minutes.

3.  When the 15 minutes are up, remove the eggs from the pot and submerge them in a bowl of ice water. This will stop the cooking process, make the eggs easier to peel and ensure that your egg salad isn’t strangely warm.

4.  Peel the eggs. Like boiling them, this is less simple than you might think. To peel the eggs without frustration, crack the shell at both ends and then roll the egg between your palm and a hard surface until the entire shell is cracked. The shell should then come off easily, especially if you start on the broad end of the egg where the air pocket is.

Making Egg Salad

1.  Dice the eggs and the celery.

2.  In a medium-sized bowl, combine the eggs, celery, mayonnaise and mustard. We recommend adding the mayonnaise one spoonful at a time until you reach your desired level of creaminess.

3.  Add salt and pepper to taste. You may also want to make any last minute adjustments to the mayo and mustard at this point.

4.  You’re basically done! All you have to do is assemble the sandwich. Add as much lettuce, tomato and cucumber as you want to add a little bit of crunch and freshness.

Bonus Points

To kick things up another notch, slice up some pimento olives and mix them in with your egg salad. Their salty tang really amps up the sandwich’s flavor, and their subtle chewyness contrasts nicely with the rest of this crispy/creamy sandwich.