Scotch eggs

Some weeks ago I was watching the Hairy Bikers on their Mums know best series. They were doing picnic food and decided to make Scotch eggs.  The Scotch eggs looked lovely. So much nicer than the fairly revolting specimens the supermarkets have on offer.  And it didn't look especially complicated or difficult.  I tucked the idea away in the back of my mind to contemplate it further.

More recently, I was reading someone's blog and they were discussing their attempts to make Scotch eggs.  They declared it to be a bit fiddly and a bit complicated but well worth the effort.  I decided to give it a go.

I didn't have the traditional pork mince to make pork sausage meat with. I did have some beef mince and decided to use that. No point making your own things if you can't be non-traditional!

Here are my ingredients:

Hard boiled eggs, beef sausage meat, plain flour, two eggs whisked, bread crumbs

I put the eggs into a pan of simmering water and simmered them for 6 minutes so they were hard boiled but only softly so.  I mixed some tomato paste and bread crumbs with the beef mince to form sausage meat. There was only enough meat to make four Scotch eggs.  We ate the other two eggs naked! (The eggs - not us!!!)

Eggs wrapped in a blanket of sausage meat

I formed the meat into blankets for the eggs and gently wrapped them up, taking care that no eggy bits were left exposed. I then dusted the resulting balls in the plain flour

Ready for the egg and breadcrumb coating

It is important that the eggs be double dipped in the whisked egg mix and the breadcrumbs. Then they'll become nice and crisp.

Double dipped and ready to go

Into the wok with you!

Don't be impatient when frying the eggs.  You need to make sure the sausage meat is properly cooked all the way through. But you also need to ensure the breadcrumbs don't burn!  I pretty much double cooked them, just as you would chips

Draining off the excess oil

I sat them on kitchen towel for a minute or two to drain off any excess oil - and for them to become cool enough to eat

YUMBLES!!!!!!!!

We ate one each warm for lunch, and have one each left to eat cold for lunch on Monday.  I'm definitely going to do these again.  They weren't really fiddly or complicated.  They were much, much nicer than any that you can buy in the supermarket. They would make excellent picnic food. I'm keen to try them with pork, lmab and chicken mince. And now I'm trying to work out how you could make them so they were veggie friendly too