Week 15 - British

I really like Scotch eggs and was always curious if I could make them myself, but the fact that I don't deep fry at home posed a bit of a challenge. After we got back from London, I started looking around for alternatives and found a recipe for baked Scotch eggs on Food.com that looked promising. I saved it but never got around to making it, so it seemed perfect for the British challenge.

The ingredients for the baked Scotch eggs were:

- 5 eggs ($0.25)

- 1 lb ground turkey ($4.50)

- salt and pepper ($0.05)

- thyme ($0.05)

- sage ($0.10)

- garlic powder ($0.05)

- flour ($0.15)

- bread crumbs ($0.35)

The total was about $5.50 but two eggs each wouldn't really be enough for dinner. (We ate a lot of other stuff along the way.)

The steps for the baked Scotch eggs were:

1. Hard boil 4 eggs.

2. While eggs are cooking, combine ground turkey with salt, pepper, thyme, sage, and garlic powder. [I didn't measure anything, but just used what looked like a good amount to me.]

3. Split turkey mixture into 4 even parts.

4. Cool and peel eggs.

5. Set up bowls for dredging system (this should have been my first clue that maybe this wasn't going to go perfectly) - one with flour, one with bread crumbs, one with the last egg beaten, one with water, and then the peeled eggs and turkey mixture in their own bowls.

6. Dip each egg in water, then flour, and surround with turkey mixture. Then dip in egg and cover in bread crumbs.

[When I did the first two eggs this way, they looked gigantic, way too large for a regular Scotch egg. For the last two eggs, I split one of the turkey portions into two and just used half on each egg. That left us with a quarter of the turkey mixture and no eggs, so I just made it into a turkey burger that we ate for an appetizer.]

7. Chill eggs for an hour. [It was supposed to be an hour but it was late, and I had somehow forgotten the chilling step was there. We ended up chilling it for maybe 45 minutes instead.]

8. Bake eggs at 400 degrees until turkey is fully cooked. We started with 30 minutes but they weren't done, so we probably cooked them for 40 minutes total.

9. Cut eggs in half and serve.

The Scotch eggs were okay. Not as much flavor as the ones in the restaurants, but healthier because not deep fried. Way too much meat surrounding the eggs, but I think that was my failure in execution rather than the recipe. I just couldn't seem to get a thin turkey layer to cover the egg evenly on all sides. I really don't know how they do it, even to deep fry it, and get it so even. The turkey wasn't bad as a substitute, but I probably could have added more seasonings to it. While this was good, I probably won't try this again as it's easier to just get them at a restaurant.