Creamed eggs on toast: a simple but delicious breakfast recipe that isn’t served often enough. The height of morning comfort foods!
For the uninitiated, creamed eggs on toast is a simple combination of béchamel sauce and hardboiled eggs served over toasted crusty bread. It is incredibly simple and wildly underrated. Whenever my family gets together it is almost guaranteed that someone requests this for breakfast. Frankly at this point, we (the breakfast monsters) don’t even have to request it. It just sort of naturally occurs, like the tides. If you were an oceanographer you could study it.
American food as a concept is tough to nail down, with perhaps the exception of hamburgers and BBQ. Our cultural melting pot runs far too deep to be able to label too many dishes strictly “American”. That said, I do feel I can classify this dish as such. As far as I have been able to find (although I am definitely not the expert here), this dish doesn’t appear to have any deeper cultural ties. There’s a great little write-up on Taste Atlas here that explains that this dish is thought to have originated in the Depression-era American south.
The internet had also informed me that it’s also known as Eggs Goldenrod; this was news to me.
Taste Atlas also says that this recipe is often eaten around Easter as a way to consume an excess of eggs, which is exactly what my family does. And that’s my bonus pro-tip for you: when Easter arrives, this recipe is going to be the best way to use up leftover hardboiled eggs. Plus, when the dye leaches into your eggs, you end up with a wildly colored cream sauce. And that’s just free entertainment!
You can really use any bread you want as the foundation for creamed eggs on toast. I always recommend crusty white breads that are sturdy enough to withstand toasting: sourdough, French, ciabatta and the like. But you don’t have to be limited to just those! Try it on biscuits, cornbread, focaccia – you name it! In fact, we often eat it on Swedish rye bread (LINK). (As I mentioned in that recipe however, Swedish rye bread doesn’t take too well to toasting – this is one of the rare examples where the bread is better left untoasted.)
Looking for other awesome breakfast recipes? Check out my Caramelized Banana Orange Chai Granola, Breakfast Polenta Casserole and Swedish Pancake recipes.
Creamed Eggs on Toast
Ingredients
- 4 hardboiled eggs
- 2 tbsp butter
- 2 tbsp all-purpose flour
- 1 cup whole milk
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp onion powder
- pepper to taste
- paprika, to garnish (optional)
Instructions
- Dice hardboiled eggs into bite sized pieces and set aside.
- Melt butter in medium sauce pan. Let the butter finish bubbling and steaming.
- Whisk in flour. Combine thoroughly so that no clumps remain. Let cook together for a minute or so.
- Add the milk and turn heat down to medium-low. Cook for 2-4 minutes, whisking often, until thickened.
- Add hardboiled eggs and stir. Add a splash more milk if it's too thick - you're looking for a consistency similar to pancake batter.
- Toast bread and divide between two plates. Ladle creamed eggs over toast and garnish with paprika, if desired.
Currently Listening: The Polish Ambassador – Super Chill Goats vol. 1 & 2
