This Jalapeño Bacon Egg Salad is fantastic on my grain free crackers

Having a lot of eggs from Easter has made me crave Egg salad and in particular bacon jalapeno egg salad.  Yesterday I hard boiled the eggs and posted how to make perfect hard boiled eggs, and today I made my egg salad.  Boy am I glad I made a lot.  It's so good it won't last long!  The best part is that if you use the right ingredients this can actually be a healthy breakfast, lunch, or snack.  The trick is to use good ingredients.  Mayo, bacon, and eggs can all be bad for you if your using your standard super market stuff, but it doesn't have to be!  Wish I knew that a long time ago.  Here's how you can make this recipe and enjoy it as often as you wish because it's healthy. 


Mayo Is Good For You If You Make It Yourself With Olive Oil
Mayo is only good for you if you make it yourself, because if you make it yourself you can make it with (100% olive oil, or even some flax or pasture raised bacon grease).  Even the seemingly best quality mayo at a health food store has bad oils in it (canola, soy or vegetable, sunflower, etc) even if it has olive oil on the label. Olive oil will often be listed much lower on the ingredient list than the other oils in it.  And contrary to what you have been told by our culture Canola, Soy, grapeseed, peanut, sunflower, etc are not good for you (especially non organic soy and canola oil since it's GMO (Genetically Modified Organism)and heavily pesticided crops. The reason is that even those these oils are likely to oxidize (which can cause heart disease and inflamation) because of the high heats used in processing it often turning it into partially trans fat , they use chemical solvents to extract it, and they often have high omega 6 to 3 ratios.  It is much easier to decrease your omega 6s in your diet than to increase omega 3s as I've blogged about before.  If you want a more detailed break down of nearly all oils check out Mark's Daily Apple.

One oil that no one disagrees with as being healthy is olive oil and flax.  The problem with both (especially) flax is they are highly unstable and sensitive to oxidation (which is why you should only buy both in dark glass and keep in a cool dark place) so with flax you can never cook with it and use should only cook with olive oil only under the lowest temps.  So the most ideal way to get lots of olive oil and flax oil is in salad dressings, sauces (not cooked) and you guessed it mayo.  So why do most commercially made products of mayo, salad dressings, and marinera sauces (even organic ones) use these other bad fats instead of olive oil?  Money honey.  Olive oil's expensive.  But it's not to expensive to make yourself and it's seriously easy.  How easy?  It seriously takes no more than 15 min and it taste way better than any store bought stuff. An extra bonus is you can add any flavoring you want or even make baconnaise by using pasture raised bacon fat instead of olive oil.  Check out my mayo recipe here.

Why Pasture Raised Bacon Is Not Bad For You 
Much like mayo standard bacon at the store is bad for you, so the advice you've always heard isn't really wrong, it's just that you haven't been told the loop hole. If you buy pasture raised bacon that's uncured (better than commercially cured bacon with nitrates) or better yet cured the old school traditional (not what you find in your traditional supermarket) way using nitrates (which ironically ends up with less nitrates than uncured meats) it's not bad for you.  Meat, eggs, and dairy products from pastured animals compared with commercial products, they offer you more "good" fats (omega 3's and CLA's), and fewer "bad" fats (omega 6s). They are richer in antioxidants; including vitamins E, beta-carotene, and vitamin C. Furthermore, they do not contain traces of added hormones, antibiotics or other drugs. Check out Eat Wild for more details or my article about why pasture raised animals are good for you and how to find pasture raised animals in your area.

The tricky thing is most pigs have a hard time being raised 100% on pasture due to most breeds not being cold hardy (except for some heritage breeds which is why owning them being illegal is ridiculous).  So you won't find pasture raised labelled bacon even in your local health food store.  Your best bet is to research how your local farmers are raising their pigs.  There's likely to at least be one in your area that raises pigs on pasture for most of the year.  In the summer we get our pork from Hill Top Pasture's Family Farm at the Midtown Farmer's market and the rest of the year we get our pork from Pasture's A Plenty at Seward Co-op.  Here is a list of other locations you can find Pasture's a Plenty at in MN.  He get there uncured bacon ends at $4/lb.  They're basically the left over pieces from cutting the bacon, so they're in fat chunks rather than strips of bacon.  Perfect for cutting up into little pieces and using in dishes like this.

Now that you know how and why to buy good ingredients let's get cooking!


Jalapeno Bacon Egg Salad

Ingredients

• 6 pasture raised eggs hard boiled 
• 1/4 cup of olive oil mayo get my recipe here (it uses about 1/2 of what this recipe makes)
• 1/4 cup of pasture raised (uncured or cured in a traditional method) bacon diced (about 3-4 strips of bacon)
• 1 small jalapeno diced (remove the seeds and ribs if you don't like it spicy and tast it as you are putting in to make sure it's not to spicy since all peppers very in their spice depending on the crop conditions)
• 1/4 cup onions diced sautéed until softened
• 1/2 tsp dry mustard (can sub prepared mustard in your fridge)
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp onion powder
• 1/4 tsp pink salt
• 1/4 tsp paprika
• freshly ground black pepper to taste

Directions

1. Hard boil 6 eggs according to the directions in my article here.  This can be done a day ahead.
2. Make 1/4 cup of olive oil or more (my recipe yields about 1/2 cup).  By following my recipe here. This can be made even a few days ahead.
3. Dice up about 1/4 cup of bacon, about 3-4 strips and cook on low heat on a skillet (I used a cast iron skillet) being careful to not over cook, (since burning meats creates carcinogens).
4. After your bacon is almost done add 1/4 cup of diced onions and cook until softened or slightly translucent (should take about 1-5 min).  
5. Peel your eggs once cooled and place in a small bowl with your cooked onion and bacon.  Cut up the hard boiled eggs and add 1/4 cup of mayo, 1/2 tsp dry mustard (can sub prepared mustard in your fridge), 1/2 tsp garlic powder, 1/2 tsp onion powder, 1/4 tsp pink salt and stir.
6. Add your small diced jalapeños slowly stirring and tasting as you do to make sure it's not to spicy.   
7. Garnish with 1/4 tsp of paprika and freshly ground black pepper, serve in a bowl, as a sandwich, or on my grain free crackers.

Grain Free Crackers
Check out my full post on this recipe for more detailed instructions (and pictures)

Ingredients

Dry
1 1/2 cups almond flour or meal (could try to sub with flax or coconut meal if you're allergic to nuts)
½ cup flax meal
1 tsp baking soda
1 teaspoon pink salt
3 tbsp. dried flaked onion
2 tablespoons garlic powder
1 tsp favorite herbs of choice (I used an italian mix)
2 tsp rosemary
1 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp paprika
½ tsp mustard powder
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (more or less to taste)

Wet
2  tablespoons water
1 egg
2 tablespoon olive oil
Dash of hot sauce (more or less to taste)

Directions 

1. Preheat oven to 325.
2. Place 1/2 cup of almonds in your food processor until it is turned into a flour and empty into a medium sized bowl (skip this step if you bought almond meal or flour, I buy almond meal at Trader Joe's cause it's cheaper than buying almonds $3.99 /lb)
3.  Combine almond flour, salt, baking soda, and spices in a medium mixing bowl.  In a small bowl, whisk together the water, egg, oilve oil, and hot sauce.  Pour wet ingredients into dry and stir until stiff dough forms and all dry ingredients are wet.
4.  Place dough between 2 sheets of parchment paper and roll out to an even thickness of about 1/8 of an inch.  Transfer parchment to a baking sheet pan and remove the top piece of parchment.  Using a pizza cutter trim off uneven edges of dough, then cut the sheet of dough into cracker size pieces/squares.  You don’t need to separate them now; after they bake, they will break right along this edge, like perforation.  Sprinkle garlic salt and onion powder on top.
5.  Bake for 15 minutes and then check on the crackers. You are looking for them to color ever so slightly. A little color means crispy, but a lot of color means burned nut taste, which is no good. If the edges have started to color nicely, remove them to a plate and put the remaining crackers back in the oven. Keep doing this, checking every 5 minutes and removing the golden crackers, until finally they are all baked to perfection.

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