I don’t know about you, but egg salad was something I always simultaneously enjoyed and dreaded in my youth. Half of me wanted to find an egg salad sandwich in my lunch box, but the other half of me was wary of egg salad’s most noticeable side effect: that vaguely sulfuric and extremely pungent egg odor. You can’t discreetly eat an egg salad sandwich; everybody in a ten-foot radius knows what’s goin’ down at the lunch table when you’re munching one. But them’s the breaks of eating eggs!

As vegans, we generally don’t encounter egg odors. So you’d think that this week’s Friday Favorite, Happy Herbivore’s Eggless Salad, would be free of olfactory offenses. Not so! This recipe includes black salt, also known as kala namak, and if you’re not familiar with it, here’s a breakdown: it’s not black and it’s highly sulfuric. So it’s perfect for adding a distinctly eggy flavor and aroma to otherwise egg-less goods! Isa Chandra Moskowitz pioneered the use of black salt in Vegan Brunch, and Lindsay uses it to great effect in this tofu-based salad. I’ve enjoyed her Eggless Salad in the past, and this time was no different. Yesterday, I ate it in a pita pocket with a few leftover collard leaves:

Pocket salad.

Yum yum in my tum. I know I’m not the only one who enjoys this super simple salad; LJ has posted about it more than once at her MoFo blog this month!

I should say, though, that if you haven’t eaten eggs in a while, it’s definitely a little jarring to eat black salt-laden foods because the similarity to eggs is uncanny. But if you’re looking for an eggy flavor to add variety to your eats, give black salt a try! I found mine in an Indian grocery store back in Rhode Island, and it was only a few dollars for a bag that will last me years. Win!

Have you tried black salt? If so, how do you like to use it? How do you feel about pungent foods?