Scotch eggs

     After going to the Renaissance Faire this year with my friend Lyz, she and I made a plan to visit each other again soon.  Since cooking with friends is always fun, we made a plan to have a cooking date and, inspired by our recent visit, decided to make Scotch eggs.  Scotch eggs, if you've never heard of them, are hard boiled eggs covered by sausage and breadcrumbs and then fried.  They are delicious!  Since one of my favorite book series/show, Outlander, takes place in Scotland, I decided to use my Outlander Kitchen cookbook by Theresa Carle-Sanders for this Scottish recipe.

Scotch eggs from Outlander Kitchen by Theresa Carle-Sanders

Ingredients:

7 large eggs

1/2 cup all purpose flour

1/2 tsp kosher salt

pinch of cayenne pepper

1 1/2 cups panko breadcrumbs

1 1/2 lbs pork sausage 

vegetable oil

Procedure:

1) In a large saucepan, cover 6 eggs with cold water and top off with an extra inch.  Bring to a full rolling boil over high heat, remove from the heat, and cover for 7 minutes.  Drain and cover the eggs with ice water until cool to the touch, then peel them.

2) In a small bowl, stir together the flour, salt, and cayenne pepper.  In another bowl, beat the remaining egg with 1 teaspoon of water to make an egg wash.  Fill a third bowl with breadcrumbs.

3) Flatten 4 ounces of sausage into a patty in the palm of your hands, and wrap it around a peeled egg.  Repeat with the remaining sausage meat and eggs.  Roll the sausage-covered eggs in the flour to coat lightly, then in the egg wash, and finally in the breadcrumbs to cover evenly.

4) In a large frying pan, heat 3 inches of vegetable oil to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  Fry the Scotch eggs until golden, turning occasionally, about 3 minutes.  Drain on paper towels.  Alternatively, bake in a 400 degrees Fahrenheit oven until light golden and crispy, 25-30 minutes.

5) Serve warm or cold.  Store leftovers up to 3 days in the fridge.

Peeling the eggs and looking good doing so!

Cooking with friends is the best!

We've got our egg station all ready to go

Waiting for the oil to come up to temperature

We're frying, baby!!

Eating our (now very crisp) scotch eggs!

     Although this recipe was definitely a lot of work, it went totally fast with good company and an extra pair of hands!  The recipe was definitely delicious, but a bit tricky.  The first time we went to eat our scotch eggs, we found that the sausage was still undercooked.  We had to re-fry the eggs for another three to six minutes before everything was cooked through!  I took a while since we fried the eggs in batches of three and had to wait for the oil to get back up to temperature each time.  All together, we ended up frying in five separate three minute batches.  

  This was my first time deep frying something and it wasn't as terrifying as I thought it would be.  Once everything did cook up, it was delicious!  Crispy on the outside with a softer egg/meat on the inside.  It kind of reminds me of an Egg McMuffin without any muffin.  I would definitely make these again, but would change things around slightly.  I think I would start heating up the oil right away, as it took quite a bit of time to come up to temperature.  I would also be more careful about exactly measuring the sausage (we just eyeballed it) and would definitely make sure that the sausage was spread more thinly across the egg; it seemed to be the big bulges of sausage that were raw.  Come to think of it, maybe I'd even bake it and save myself all of the frying trouble.  Either way, definitely worth it as a fun treat!