Traditionally picnic food, I noticed the Scotch Egg has been raised in status during my recent trip to Melbourne with it appearing on several menus of restaurants I visited. Supposedly British in origin, Fortnum & Mason claims to have invented the Scotch Egg in 1738, although another story is that they have origins from medieval India.
A Scotch Egg is basically a soft boiled egg surrounded by sausage meat, breadcrumbed and fried, I thought I would tackle making some today and assumed it would be quite easy. OK, so it’s not difficult, but it can be fiddly and you really have to get your egg timing right if you don’t want a hard boiled yolk. There are two moments where you might run into difficulty. Firstly you must peel the eggs very carefully to avoid them breaking, and secondly, coating the egg with sausage mince can prove difficult at first, but I was actually getting the hang of it by the time I was up to the third (and last) egg. (And after yesterday’s post, just in case you are wondering, no, I didn’t eat one of these – although Albert was very happy with his first ever Scotch Egg that was served for his lunch).
Scotch Eggs
- 4 large eggs (+ 2 extra beaten)
- 400g Italian sausage meat – roughly 100g meat per egg and I just bought one long sausage and removed the meat from the casing.
- handful of chopped parsley
- 1 teaspoon grated nutmeg
- 1 tablespoon of English mustard (I used wholegrain mustard)
- freshly cracked black pepper
- fresh breadcrumbs or Panko breadcrumbs
- flour
- vegetable oil for frying
- fill a saucepan with cold water and add the eggs. Bring to the boil and allow eggs to cook for 3 minutes. Remove from heat and replace water in saucepan with cold water. (This stops the cooking process).
- Once cooled, peel eggs carefully. I find it helps to peel them under water.
- Mix parsley, nutmeg, mustard and black pepper to sausage until well combined.
- Ensure the eggs are dry, and place a ball of sausage meat on your hand, flatten in out to make a disk and enclose the egg gently, manoeuvring the egg and the sausage meat until the egg is completely covered.
- Roll sausage covered eggs in flour, beaten eggs and breadcrumbs. Wait about 5-10 minutes, and dip the eggs into the beaten egg and breadcrumbs again.
- Deep fry the Scotch Eggs in hot vegetable oil for about 5 minutes, (I don’t have a deep fryer, so I used a deep frying pan) turning the eggs gently to ensure they are golden all over.
- Some recipes suggest popping them into the oven for 5-10 minutes if you’re worried the sausage meat might not be cooked. I didn’t do this.
It looks delicious!!!