During Easter holidays, my family would traditionally eat the so-called Soleier. Eier of course are eggs, sol comes from the middle high German word sul, meaning “salty water”. Or, if you want, brine in English. There are a few varieties to how those eggs are eaten. Throughout German pubs, in the mid and later 1900’s, pickled eggs were a common sight at bar counters. They’d have jars of brine filled with peeled eggs. You could purchase the pickled eggs to go nicely with a beer. Nowadays though, increasing health standards and food safety regulations have all but made these extinct. I couldn’t even find any pictures of them in a pub any more! But during Easter, the tradition of pickling eggs has persevered in some families, in different ways.
Variations
On my dad’s side of the family, they’d actually pickle the eggs before consumption. Just like it was done at pubs. The recipe for this has sadly not passed the test of time, my dad’s mom passed away before I was born. How to make those pickled eggs sadly wasn’t among the things she taught my own mom. She taught her lots and lots of other good stuff, I’ll probably go into some of those later. There apparently are a myriad of different ways to pickle them, the key ingredient being salt. Everything else, like vinegar, onions, cumin, mustard seeds, or even red beet juice, are up for discussion. Also the question of using eggs with or without the shell is a hot topic amongst egg picklers.
Some people would eat those eggs straight away, but sometimes you’d do the more convoluted, and frankly, tastier thing. I’m going to dive into how to do that here. Pubs sometimes served the eggs the way they were, or also offered the option to put in more effort for this tastier way of consumption.
In my mom’s family though, they’d do the elaborate way, but without pickling the eggs first. And since all I can remember from my childhood are Easter celebrations with my mom’s side of the fam, that’s all I ever got to taste. Probably, it doesn’t make much of a difference, as the way we did it is pretty intense, taste-wise, already. And here’s
How you do it
Take a hard boiled (and possibly pickled) egg, slice it down the length of it. Then, pop out the yolk by gently pushing it out from the outside of the egg. The tricky part here is not breaking the yolk or poking holes in the egg white. If the eggs haven’t been boiled long enough, the yolk can still be kinda crumbly or sticky, you don’t want that. So make sure to boil the eggs for at least 12 minutes. After this step, it should look something like the thing on the right
Next step: pour a little oil and vinegar into it, preferably while already holding it in your hand. Picking it up afterwards is quite tricky. Make sure to not put too much vinegar, most of all, since there’s a delicate balance of all ingredients to make it taste really nice. If it looks something like the picture on the left, you’re good to go for the next step.
Carefully balance the yolk on the pointy part of the egg. If you’ve got a crumbly yolk, it gets more tricky, but you can carefully drop the crumbs into the oil/vinegar mix as well. If you didn’t fill the hole to the brim, the crumbs will soak up most of the liquid and you won’t spill any. And then, finally, pop it into your mouth. Try mushing everything together while you chew, to fully savour the combination of salty, sour, and the tang of the pepper. The yolk should bring it all together nicely.
Should you think to yourself: this sounds absolutely disgusting, I gotta try me some of that, you are absolutely right. In order to make them yourselves, you probably have already figured out what you need, and how to make it. Here are some useful tools, that might help.
The proper equipment and ingredients
Things like this: A nice set of oil and vinegar dispensers. They come in a lot of varieties, some are really fancy but hard to clean, others are straight forward like the one on the right. You could also go with just getting yourself a set of pourers, and stick them on any kind of bottle you already have. What you’re looking for is a nice pour control. You don’t want to end up spilling oil and vinegar all over yourself and the table. At home we used to have some really fancy tiny glass carafes just for that, but after years of abuse by cleaning them in the dish washer, they became dull and were replaced by much less fancy, regular porcelain milk jugs that are usually used for coffee milk. So do yourself a favour and get something nice, if you want to be serious about this!
The above picture is and other links in this section are Amazon affiliate links. If a qualifying purchase is made through it, I may earn a commission.
The above picture is and other links in this section are Amazon affiliate links. If a qualifying purchase is made through it, I may earn a commission.
If you’re like me and didn’t already have some, you’ll also need some salt and pepper shakers. I got mine in a set with the oil and vinegar dispensers, but I found out after using them for the first time this past Easter, that they suck. They don’t screw all the way down, so there’s a huge gap between the rim of the glass container and the metal cap, where salt and pepper leaks into. If you then turn them straight back up, because of the caps not actually being fully threaded, all the salt and pepper that spilled between cap and container falls out… It was a mess and can’t be fixed. So I’ll probably look for new ones. Anyway. As with the dispensers, you’re looking for shakers that offer you a certain degree of control over the amount that you pour.
Besides that, of course some oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. Freshly ground pepper works well, but might be a hassle to first grind and then get into the shaker. I did that, and used a funnel to grind the pepper right into the shaker. You can go pretty much wild on the oil and vinegar, I mean there’s tons of different flavours out there. Especially with vinegar (just an example,you can find many flavours)! I do like my eggs with a regular sunflower seed oil and white wine vinegar. The vinegar has aged considerably, though, (or in other words, has been sitting on my kitchen counter for probably more than a year) and has taken on a darker colour. Which has probably condensed the flavour a little, I think. I’ve been experimenting with lemon, apple, and also red wine vinegar. The strong white wine stuff so far outperforms everything, though.
Concluding thoughts
It doesn’t seem like much, but those eggs are extremely tasty to me and bring back memories of times long gone. Being together with the whole family, and feasting on the traditional Easter dinner:
Potato salad with a choice or combination of Wiener sausages, Schnitzel, German Frikadellen (basically meatballs), and, of course, tons of Soleier. It wasn’t uncommon for us to eat 4, 5, or even more eggs during such a dinner.
I’ll probably add posts with the recipes for at least the potato salad, because that one is probably the easiest you’ve ever made, but also the tastiest.
Between the coffee moment in the afternoon, and the dinner in the evening, we’d also play a game, with the eggs of course. It’s Easter after all, and there would be dozens of hard boiled, and usually painted, eggs around. But that’s probably a story for another time.
