They're not Scottish, but made properly, they are absolutely wonderful
In the glistening pantheon of the world’s great drinking foods, there will always be a place for the humble Scotch egg.
While they don’t have pizza’s marketing team and can’t match the convenience of “parking-lot-tamale-guy,” it’s hard to beat ramming a delicious Scotch eggs into your muzzle when you’re pouring back a bit o’ Paddy’s eye water or find yourself three Phelps to the wind on those marijuana sticks.
If you’ve somehow gotten to this point in your life without encountering a Scotch egg, let me extend my deepest thoughts and prayers before removing the veil of darkness that has blanketed this part of your food experience.
At its most basic, a Scotch egg is a boiled chicken egg covered in sausage, coated in breadcrumbs, and deep fried to a delightful crisp. A good Scotch egg can make everything in your head-spinny little world right; a bad one tastes like sawdust and disappointment with a side of egg farts. No bueno.
London’s fancy pants Fortnum & Mason department store claims to have invented the Scotch egg, but it takes quite a set of bollocks to claim you invented wrapping meat around a yardbird egg. It also means you have to ignore Indian nargisi kofta (the leading contender for the earliest version), Indonesian bakso telur, Polish jaskółcze gniazda, Dutch vogelnestje and even Portuguese bolinhos and several other lesser known instances of wrapping eggs in meat.
Sidenote: you’ve probably figured out by now that Scotch eggs are not Scottish.The best Scotch eggs don’t venture far from the basics so don’t use the two halves as a burger bun, don’t cross pollinate it with a falafel, and don’t you dare replace the sausage with rice or quinoa or I will personally hunt you down and waterboard you with bacon fat.
A proper scotch egg should raise concerns about the integrity of your arteries and risk a gout flare-up with each bite. This is drinking food—it’s no time to be thinking about your health.
For the recipe below I’ve added a little Southern flair to the traditional British Scotch egg version with some pork rinds and cayenne pepper. Cheers y’all!
Scotch Egg
- 6 eggs
- 1 lb unseasoned pork sausage
- 3 tbsp chopped chives, sage, and thyme
- ¾ tsp salt
- ¾ tsp pepper
- 1 tbsp English mustard
- 6 oz flour
- 2 cups plain, salted pork rinds, ground into crumbs
- 2 tsp garlic powder
- 2 tsp ground cayenne pepper
- Vegetable oil, to cook
Sauce
- 1/2 cup olive oil mayonnaise
- 1/4 cup Dijon mustard
- 1 ounce lemon juice
Put four of the eggs into a pan (the other two are for breading), cover with cold water and bring to the boil. Turn down the heat and simmer for five minutes then drain and put the eggs straight into a large bowl of iced water. Wait at least 10 minutes then peel the eggs.
While the eggs cool, whisk the mayonnaise, mustard, and lemon juice together to create the mustard sauce. Refrigerate until needed.
Beat the remaining two raw eggs together in a bowl, put the flour in a second bowl, and mix the pork rind crumbs, garlic powder and cayenne pepper into a third bowl. Arrange the bowls like an assembly line.
Put the meat, herbs, salt, pepper, and mustard into a bowl and mix well with your hands. Divide into four portions.
Put a square of plasticwrap on your counter, flour it lightly and put one of the meatballs in the centre. Flour lightly again, then put another square of cling film on top. Roll the meat out until it’s large enough to wrap around an egg. Remove the top sheet of plasticwrap.
Roll one peeled egg in flour, place it in the center of the meat, and bring the sides of the film up to help wrap the meat completely around egg, ensuring the egg is no longer visible and the meat is as uniform as possible around the egg.
Dip and cover each meat-wrapped egg in flour, then beaten egg, then pork rind crumbs and refrigerate for 1 hour. Remove from the refrigerator, dip in egg again, and coat in pork rind crumbs once again.
Fill a pan with enough vegetable oil to at least cover the Scotch eggs halfway and heat to 350F (or until a chunk of bread sizzles and turns golden brown, not burnt when dropped in). Cook the eggs two at a time, until crisp and golden, (about 8 minutes) then drain on paper towels.
Slice into quarters lengthwise and serve with mustard sauce.
Mike McJunkin is a native Chattanoogan currently living abroad who has trained chefs, owned and operated restaurants. Join him on Facebook at facebook.com/SushiAndBiscuits