Bobby Flay's Best Kept Secret For Avocado Toast Is A Simple Egg Trick

Avocado toast is one of those easy dishes you can dress up in myriad ways and achieve a different result every time. You can upgrade the toast by seasoning it simply before even introducing the avocado, mash all manner of add-ins into the green fruit, or top it with herbs, spices, and even savory proteins to not only zhuzh up the flavor but also create a more substantial plate. One of celebrity chef Bobby Flay's avocado toast preparations achieves the latter in a pretty hearty way. In a clip from his Food Network show "Brunch @ Bobby's," Flay tops a fairly conservative portion of avocado with a whole darn heap of egg salad to create an open-faced sandwich mashup.

Flay's egg salad calls for grating hard-boiled eggs for a more crumbled texture, plus Dijon mustard, crème fraîche, shallots, fresh dill, and salt and pepper. Like the avocado mix itself, it's only roughly combined to maintain some body in the bowl, and ultimately on the toast. You can use the egg salad recipe of your choice — or even avoid much of a recipe at all — for a similar effect, but it's a good idea to keep that grated consistency in mind. The interplay of the avocado and egg salad is what's important.

You could do little more than grate a hard-boiled egg over your avocado toast for a protein punch and a minor variation in texture. Hard-boiled eggs aren't the most flavorful on their own, however, so you'd still probably want to add a bit more seasoning, at which point you're edging toward egg salad territory anyway, so you may as well go all in. Some of the best egg salads keep it simple with just three ingredients, though, so "all in" doesn't have to take all afternoon. The egg itself, mayo, and mustard are a great place to start.

You'll probably also want a few turns of black pepper, but you may be able to pull back on the salt, depending on how much you've already added to the avocado and toast. You could also swap the mayo with its garlicky BFF, aioli, or experiment with different mustard varieties for a little sweetness here or extra spice there. It's nice to keep something on hand for crunch, too, like Flay does with the shallots (he also adds crisp radicchio as a garnish). If chopping another thing just isn't on the table, there are plenty of store-bought sources of crispness you can shake on top. Shelf-stable fried onions are ideal in this application, as are peppy wasabi peas, and that old, iconic sandwich filling, potato chips.