scotch eggs

my sister gave me a copy of the joy of cooking for christmas...and it has been sitting on my coffee table where it can be thumbed through at night and on weekends.  because who knows when inspiration might strike for a new culinary experiment!  in this case, i somehow wondered whether the book contained knowledge of scotch eggs (possibly because one of my friends had been talking about frying brussels sprouts).  lo and behold, it did!

now, until a few years ago, i didn't even know what a scotch egg was.  but then i tried one at the renaissance festival (wonderful institution), and i decided that they were quite wonderful.  so for the similarly uninitiated and deprived, scotch eggs are hard-boiled eggs that have been encapsuled in sausage and fried.  delicious!

i fully expected my first attempt to be less than completely successful, so i didn't want to go for a full batch.  for my initial experiment, i kept the batch size to four.  total time (prep and cook) for this was about 30 minutes.  four eggs is probably enough for two sittings.  i'll also speculate that they would work quite well as superb owl party appetizers.  astonishingly, though, i forgot it was superb owl sunday until this afternoon.  go figure.
 

ingredients:
- eggs
- sausage (i used neese's with extra sage just because it looked interesting)
- flour
- oil (i used canola)

preparation:
hard-boil the eggs.  for those who haven't done it before, put the eggs in a pot of cold water (enough to cover the eggs) and bring to a boil.  remove the pot from the heat, cover, and let sit for 12 minutes.  rinse with cold water to stop the cooking process.  shell the eggs and be sure to leave the egg intact.  i will say that the most tedious part of this process involves deshelling the eggs.  i admit breaking a couple of the egg whites, but it didn't stop me from making use of them for my experiment.

while the eggs are hard-boiling, form patties with the ground sausage.  the book's recipe calls for two ounces of sausage per egg.  once the eggs are ready and shelled, wrap the sausage around each egg.  i found that a long, rectangular patty of sausage was easier to manipulate than a round patty.  dredge each scotch egg in flour to prepare for the frying.

add oil to a shallow pan (i used an eight inch cast iron skillet) and bring up to a medium high heat.  once hot (i.e., a drop of water in the oil starts popping), put two eggs in and begin browning the sausage.  roll the egg around to thoroughly cook all parts of the sausage; i found that it took about 3-4 minutes to fully cook each egg.

remove the cooked eggs, put on a paper towel to absorb excess oil, and repeat with remaining eggs.

verdict and lessons learned:
for an initial experiment, i am quite satisfied with the results.  in fact, i'm glad i ignored the cookbook's recommendation to dunk the flour-dredged sausage in raw egg and breadcrumbs before frying; i think that would have been an unnecessary step that added little value and/or taste to the final product.  that said, there were several things that i will do better and/or differently next time.

1. don't overcook the hard-boiled eggs.  i noticed that the yolks of my scotch eggs were darker yellow, which seems to be indicative of being overcooked.  while 12 minutes seems to be a reasonable time to let eggs cook for normal hard-boiling, i suspect that the frying process continues to cook (and then overcook) the yolks.  next time, i'll try hard-boiling for only 10 minutes.  further refinement may be required.
2. cover the eggs in more sausage.  the two ounces of sausage per egg (as recommended by the cookbook) is clearly insufficient.  during the frying process, the sausage separated from the egg.  i suspect that the direct  contact between egg and oil exacerbated the problem of overcooked yolk.  next time, a little extra sausage should be added to ensure full coverage.
3. use a slotted spoon during the frying process.  today, i used a metal spatula to rotate the eggs in the oil.  a slotted spoon would make removing the fully-cooked scotch eggs easier (using a fork to balance the egg while trying to drain the oil is more difficult than it looks.