Baked Scotch Eggs

Yes,  scotch eggs cooked in the oven – these are baked scotch eggs!

I love scotch eggs, but, like most people, have never owned a deep fat fryer and have no desire to buy one.  When I was growing up we had a regular chip pan – a large saucepan with a chip basket and lid- and so I used to make scotch eggs for summer picnics and Xmas buffet meals, using that.  Which was fine.  Once I left home, however, I’ve never had the desire to be cooking with pans of hot fat.

But, just because you don’t have a chip pan, or a deep fat fryer, there’s no need to miss out – indeed, I actually prefer to eat my baked scotch eggs!  They have fewer calories (every little helps) and are less greasy.

The food cheat method is that you can make just 1-2 scotch eggs – ideal if you’re cooking for one – but just double the recipe to make more scotch eggs.

Ingredients:

• 1 boiled egg
• 1 sausage, weighing about 1oz/30 grams (match the number of sausages to eggs)
• Flour, an egg*, breadcrumbs*, seasoning to coat

Method:

1. Set up three bowls, containing: the flour, seasoned with salt/pepper; the egg, beaten; breadcrumbs
2. Shell your boiled egg.
3. With a knife, slice down the length of the sausage and the skin will just peel away.  Discard the skin. It’s a good idea to flour your hands for this next bit – squeeze the sausage meat into a ball, then flatten it so it’s oval shaped and much larger than your boiled egg. Lay this sausagemeat patty on your hand.
4. Place the boiled egg onto the sausagemeat and then pull/shape the sausagemeat round the egg, pressing any joins together.  Use your hands to shape it into a good round shape.
5. Now it’s off to the bowls – first roll your scotch egg in the flour, this will make the egg stick.  Next roll it in the egg.  Next roll it in the breadcrumbs to coat it.  You can double-dip it in the egg and breadcrumbs to give a deeper coating.
6. Place your scotch eggs onto a sheet of baking paper in a shallow dish.
7. Bake in the oven, at 190°C on the middle shelf, for about 25 minutes, until the breadcrumbs are the colour you like.

You can store your cooked scotch eggs in the fridge, in a sealed pot or bag, for 3-4 days.

Serve hot or cold, I prefer them cold most of the time, either alone as a snack/nibble, or with a simple salad.

The recipe above is for one scotch egg, but you can make as many as you want.  It’d not make sense to put the oven on for just one scotch egg, but this is a great quick/easy recipe to make when you’ve already got the oven on for something else or when you’ve got a couple of sausages to use up!

* Alternatives to Breadcrumbs:

You don’t have to just use breadcrumbs to coat scotch eggs, there are other choices you can make.  I’ve listed some here: Breadcrumb Alternatives.

* Alternatives to using a Beaten Egg

If you don’t want to use a whole egg just to coat 1-2 scotch eggs, then you could try mayonnaise!  The egg is just used to stick the breadcrumbs to the sausagemeat.