Baked "Scotch" Eggs

Quarantine cooking has inspired me to try new recipes, such as "Baked Scotch Eggs." Here is the absolutely true story of how I found this recipe. I was scrolling through Facebook--as one does--and came across a story about how attractive Scottish actor David Tennant (Doctor Who, Jessica Jones, Good Omens, etc.) is. I learned that he co-stars in an HBO comedy I had never heard of, Camping, and looked it up on IMDB. Somehow in the process of doing all this research, I decided to click on an advertisement for Eggland's Best eggs, a recipe for something called "Baked Scotch Eggs." 

Never yet having achieved the vacation bucket-list item of visiting London--but having greatly enjoyed our 10 days in Scotland (e.g. see this post from Aberdeen, or search "Scotland" in this blog's labels)--I had no idea about the origin stories of Scotch Eggs or debates on how to eat them. For instance, they are traditionally fried and eaten in bars, although apparently you can also get them at "petrol stations" instead of the insipid, over-cooked "hot dogs" found on those little heated rollers at gas stations stateside.

Since the last dozen eggs Dear Husband bought at the grocery store were smaller than usual, I figured they were perfect for hiding at the center of meatballs coated in bread crumbs. While watching a Zoom about educating anti-racist health professionals, I assembled a double batch by doubling the recipe below. I ended up using closer to 3 cups of the exactly 2 pounds of ground pork DH was able to find, and I used the rest of the meat to make 10 small meatballs that I coated in the rest of the breadcrumbs.

Ingredients:

4 whole eggs

1 egg white

1 ¼ cup minced pork

½ cup diced white onions

1 tsp rosemary

1 tsp ground pepper

½ tsp chili powder

¼ cup breadcrumbs

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 325°F. [I did this later, when I was ready to bake them just before dinner.]

2. Boil eggs in hot water for four minutes. Take the eggs out and place them in a bowl of cool water for a minute. De-shell each of the eggs and set aside. [Shelling the soft-boiled eggs took a looong time, because I forgot to try the trick I learned on the Quarantine Culinary Challenge Facebook group of a 1/2 tsp of baking soda during boiling.]

3. In a large bowl, mix together the minced pork, diced white onions, rosemary, ground pepper, chili powder, and egg white to combine.

4. Separate the meat mixture into equal balls and flatten into circles. [You need less meat than you think to fit around an egg.]

5. Place a boiled egg into the center of each circle and mold the meat around them.

6. Spread the breadcrumbs out on a tray and roll each of the balls in them. Make sure that each of the Scotch eggs is completely coated. [I didn't need to double the crumbs to have enough.]

7. Place the Scotch eggs on a baking tray and cook in the preheated oven for 30 minutes. [After 30 minutes the pork was still pink, so I upped the temperature to 400 degrees for a further 30 minutes, which did the trick.]

Tip: Serve with French mustard on the side and enjoy!

I decided to serve ours with warm baked beans and fresh asparagus asparagus dressed with olive oil and powdered garlic, since we're saving the Parmesan cheese to go with chicken next week. Because I had to turn up the oven to overcome the double meatballs having sat in the fridge, the yolks were not very runny, but DH told me he preferred them this way. This was a delightful--and different--meal, and I look forward to recreating it several times over the coming week.