My mom, Margaret – is visiting – and one her favorite foods from having grown up in London – is Scotch Eggs. It was originally served as a cold sandwich for construction workers. It’s a soft boiled egg – encased in sausage – rolled in parmesan and bread crumbs and baked. (traditionally – you’d dip in egg and deep fry it – so we tried a healthier version). They make a quick, easy brunch or lunch anytime and take all of 20 minutes to make – and 20 minutes in the oven. I’m excited Mom was in town for this show – and she’s my very special guest.

Here’s the super easy recipe:

Ingredients:

- 5 soft boiled eggs (boil in boiling water for 7 minutes – then put in a bowl in the fridge overnight, then just before starting the recipe – peel them)
- 1/2 pound italian sausage (fine ground) (a tube of Jimmy Dean will do – hot or sage; for our recipe in the video we used extra lean italian)
- 1/2 cup grated parmesan
- 1/2 cup panko style bread crumbs
- fresh ground black pepper

(and a lettuce salad of your choice – for our salad – we steamed beets and used red bell peppers on butter lettuce – but it’s totally up to you; they’d be fine even without lettuce)

Preheat oven to 400. Carefully coat each egg with sausage; making sure that there is no egg showing. If you let egg show in the pan; the egg will crisp and it won’t be nearly as tasty. Once you have all your eggs coated roll them in the mixture of bread crumbs and parmesan – making sure again to roll them gently as to not cause seams or breakage in the sausage casing around your egg. Only use enough sausage to cover the egg – getting too carried away with the amount of sausage and you might end up with a greasy situation in the baking pan. Put the eggs in a baking pan and crack black pepper over them – turning and giving them just a dusting of pepper. Then – bake. :) check in on them every 7 minutes or so and gently turn them with tongs till all sides are browned up.

I cut them in half and served them immediately – nice and hot – but – as I said at the beginning of this post – they were designed (pre-sandwich) to be rolled in a towel and served cold. So it’s totally up to you.

If you’d like to try to your hand at deep frying them and doing them a more “traditional” way – you’d roll the eggs in egg yolks – THEN the crumbs and parmesan. Heat vegetable oil to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and cook each egg in oil about 4-5 minutes or until sausage is cooked and turning until all sides are browned. Drain on paper toweling.

Doing an episode with Mom was a blast and a half! Have fun with this recipe!