Prepare a Vegan Egg Salad Sandwich

While substituting plant-based ingredients for eggs in foods like mayonnaise, pudding or cake isnt too difficult, it gets a little more challenging when youre trying to make an egg dish without any eggs.

The first consideration is the texture. For an egg salad, it needs to be chunky with clumps of tender elastic egg white along with a creamy pasty yolk that melds with the dressing to bind everything together. Ive used tofu for this recipe, but because tofu has such a high water content, its important to either press or squeeze out as much water as possible to mimic the texture of egg whites while preventing the salad from getting watery. By leaving some big chunks of tofu you get the appearance of pieces of egg whites while the rest mixes together with the dressing to form a creamy mixture just like youd get in an egg salad.

The second consideration is flavor. In the case of an egg salad, much of the flavor comes from the addition of mayonnaise (which also normally includes eggs). Thankfully I have a vegan mayonnaise recipe that takes care of this component quite nicely.

Lastly for color I add just enough turmeric to the mixture to give it a muted yellow color without making the salad taste like curry. Additionally, a bit of nutritional yeast helps in the color department as well as taste, adding plenty of amino acids that provide the taste of umami.

The finished egg salad is just as it should be: chunky, crispy, creamy and flavorful. Layered between two slices of whole grain bread with some vegetables, and its close enough that you wont miss the eponymous ingredient.