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Chef Zack Gross of Z GRille - St. Petersburg, FL
Chef Zack Gross and his wife first opened a restaurant on Central Avenue in St. Petersburg, FL back in 2005, before there was much of anything on Beach Drive. He then opened Z Grille which they designed to be fun and influenced by the skateboarding experiences of his youth. Zack notes that, “It’s not some place you’re going to come for a quiet, intimate dinner on Friday night and I didn’t want that.” The frequently changing deviled eggs menu is one of their signatures.
Zack passes along his tips for making deviled eggs at home and a recipe for his California Deviled Eggs.
Deviled Eggs Tips + Recipe
November 12, 2013
Photograph courtesy of Z Grille
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California Deviled Eggs
Recipe courtesy of chef Zack Gross of Z Grille in St. Petersburg, FL
- 4 avocados
- ¼ red onion
- ½ cup spinach
- 1 bunch cilantro
- 1 quart egg yolks / from 6 dozen hard-boiled eggs
- 5 limes, juiced
- 1 serrano pepper
- 1 cup mayonnaise
- granulated garlic
- cumin
- salt and pepper
Directions
1) Mix all ingredients together in a food processor.
2) Pipe into hard boiled egg white halves.
3) Garnish with bacon, thinly sliced jalapeño, spot of hot sauce.
Tweets
Ingredients & Flavors
I love eggs. I look at them as two things you can put anything in and people will try them. We create the deviled eggs based on what we have in the cooler. Sometimes some of them are made out of mistakes, like if we overcooked the bacon and it was too crispy.
Yesterday we had two deviled eggs: the beet and goat cheese as well as the smoked trout caviar and lemon chive. Today it’s going to be a red hot egg and a blue cheese bacon spinach egg. The other day, we added a crunchy bacon, horseradish, caramelized onion deviled egg.
Eggs
We buy regular extra-large eggs and hold them for 2 or 3 days in the cooler. Aging eggs is an interesting thing because it helps the process. There’s a whole bunch of science on how to get the perfect deviled egg and I can tell you not all of them are exact. We can make eggs for 6 weeks straight and not lose a single one of them. Then we’ll make 2 or 3 in a row and we’ll lose half a dozen eggs out of a dozen. Either they don’t hold right or they break or the yolk’s not centered.
Tips
1. To center the yolk, lay out the eggs on their side for an hour before you’re going to do them.
2. Start with cold water.
3. Don’t put too many in the pan or pot to do them.
4. When the water gets to a rapid boil, turn off the heat and cover the pot for 20 minutes.
5. After the 20 minutes is up, immediately shock them with ice water and leave them there for another 30 minutes before peeling them.