Sunday 4 April 2010

Happy Scotch Egg Easter!

There’s quite a bit of science behind making a good scotch egg so I would suggest doing a bit of research before you start to make sure you are happy with everything. It’s not a task to be undertaken lightly - as deep frying can lead to messy pain quite easily. This is as much of a warning as I’ll give so on to the fun!

Ingredients:
Eggs – The Freshest you can get
Sausage Meat – The best you can afford
Breadcrumbs – I’d used brown bread for this but I think white would be better.

Ok so we are going to start in the middle and work out; the egg is the key to this and getting it right takes a bit of work. The easiest way to do a boiled egg well is the Delia technique. Boil your water, lower your eggs in gently and cover.

Cook for one minute at a rolling boil and take off the heat and rest in the water for seven minutes and then put in an ice bath. If you are eating the boiled egg straight away six minutes is perfect for soldiers just so you know – just don’t put them in the ice bath. Peel the eggs and put to one side.

I’m using some cling film here to stop the sausage meat sticking to the work top and to help roll the meat round the egg. It seems to work well as you can get the meat the right thickness easily. Once you’ve wrapped the eggs, flour them, egg them and roll them in breadcrumbs.

Now you are ready to cook. I haven’t got a deep fryer and like a mug I forgot to pick up some more oil so as you can see shallow frying is not the most desirable way to cook these but is perfectly serviceable as long as you take care. If you are deep frying these will be cooked in 3 minutes at 180c.

Once cooked place on some kitchen roll then sit back and bask in the glory. These are at their best when warm, eat them now and you’ll be very pleased!

12 comments:

  1. Fan-bloody-tastic - Easter Eggs I'm not that bothered about - give me a warm Scotch Egg any day.

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  2. I think warm has to be best... I have a terrible taste memory of cold scotch eggs with bright orange crumbing straight from the fridge for Sunday tea.. ick..

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  3. Yummy, could eat one right now.

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  4. before making these I had some vision of batch cooking up loads and selling them at Farmers Markets and stuff but they are quite time consuming, so bravo to those brave souls who do make them to sell. These were lush and well worth the effort.

    @meemalee Don't worry I haven't forgotten I'd said I'd make you one, not sure when it'll be but soon enough!

    @josordoni - I honestly think I can't go pack to those prepackaged mass produced ones again. I know exactly what you mean by that cold cloying yellow crumbly ick

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  5. I was thinking.... if you are shallow frying, would be it be better to poach the eggs, and so get a flatter profile?

    I wonder if it would work?

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  6. hmmm it'd be worth a try but, I think the wrapping process would probably break the poached egg. I shallow fried as I didn't have enough oil to deep fry really so it wasn't a preference sadly.

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  7. They look great. I've always bottled making these due to the size of saucepan I'd need to deep fry them, the shallow frying looks like it's worked well though so I've no excuse now.

    I am truly awful at peeling eggs though so not sure mine will look so good.

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  8. @Joshue Herve has some interesting ideas on how to boil an egg and get the shell off http://www.cupblog.org/?p=572 (thank you Goodshoeday for the tip)

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  9. amused by the advice on peeling a boiled egg. surely everyone uses the technique I do: bash it all over with a teaspoon, place in cold water for a moment, peel, dunk in the water whenever the shell starts to stick to the egg again.

    your scotch eggs look beautiful btw

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  10. Thank you! You have to be very careful when peeling a just set egg, as you want it to remain whole, in my pre-test of the timings for boiled eggs the spoon/bash or "spashing" method resulted in messy egg goop going everywhere!

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  11. I love making Scotch Eggs and yours look perfect, my attempt is on the Yorkshire Dales Food Blog here http://paganum.wordpress.com/2009/01/21/homemade-scotch-eggs/ Cheers Chris

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