Farm Fresh Deviled Eggs with Garden Herbs

Start with the eggs. Not just any eggs, but eggs from hens that scratch in the dirt, eat bugs and greens, and live as chickens should. You will taste the difference the moment you bite through the set white into that golden filling. The yolk of a pasture-raised egg is deeper in color, richer in flavor, and needs almost nothing done to it.

Deviled eggs are honest food. They have been on American tables for generations, carried to church suppers and family reunions in special dishes with indentations made for the purpose. The technique is simple: boil, peel, mash the yolks with good mayonnaise and a touch of mustard, pipe back into the whites. What makes them remarkable is the quality of what goes into them.

The herbs are essential here. A generous amount of whatever is growing in your garden or available at the farmers' market. Chives, dill, parsley, tarragon, soft tender things that taste like summer. They bring the filling alive. Your choices shape the food system, and when you buy eggs from a farmer who raises hens on pasture, you support a way of farming that is better for the birds, better for the land, and better for you.