The word ‘scotch’ stems likely from an old English term ‘scotching’, which refers to the way meat is minced or chopped for wrapping around the egg. Interestingly, it’s got nothing to do with Scotland at all, although it’s near enough. Hard boiled eggs are used in this recipe and wrapped with sausage meat, coated in egg and breadcrumbs and shallow or deep fried to allow for a crispy brown outer layer covering the egg. When you slice the egg open halfway, you will be able to see the nice layerings – from brown to reddish brown to white and then yellow. Nice!
If you have the appetite, you can also use chicken eggs instead of quail eggs, which would be a lot bigger and more challenging to fry them evenly (unless you really use a deep fryer). I find using quail eggs a perfect choice as they are easier to handle and easier as a bite-sized dish too. Just nice for a small family of three.
Ingredients:
- Quail egg: 16
- Plain flour: ½ cup
- Sausage meat: 400g
- Ground blackpepper: a pinch
- Egg: 2, beaten
- Breadcrumb: 100g
- Oil: for shallow fry
Method:
- Boil quail eggs for 2min.
- Remove from water and peel away shells.
- Coat quail eggs with plain flour.
- Combine sausage meat with blackpepper. Divide into 16 portions.
- Roll each portion flat. Wrap around quail egg. Repeat for remaining 16 eggs.
- Dip sausage with egg into beaten egg. Coat with breadcrumbs.
- Shallow fry egg till golden brown, turning it around once every minute.
- Slice lengthwise into half. Serve hot and crispy with salad.
Disclaimer:
- This recipe was adapted from the 2E Home Economics textbook. The recipe works great!
Trick:
- I am not good at all when it comes to timing the eggs right during the boiling. I rarely get them with a runny yolk, but would like to try to do so in future. If you’d like to give it a try, start by boiling them for 2 minutes, then use a deep fryer to fry the eggs so that the sausage meat and batter cook at the same time. That might do the trick!
Serving:
16 quail scotch eggs
