London’s most anticipated event of the year is back and promises to be a cracking evening for all in attendance. The Scotch Egg Challenge is free to attend, but subject to capacity and as always, the winner of Scotch Egg Challenge 2019 will be decided by a panel of exacting expert judges including beer expert and educator Melissa Cole, author of The Beer Kitchen;The Guardian’s Bob Granleese; Lisa Markwell, food editor of The Sunday Times; and editor of Restaurant Magazine Stefan Chomka.
The fiercely fought, Scotch Egg Challenge is a much-valued opportunity for chefs and their teams from pubs and restaurants all around the country to come together in a spirit of camaraderie and collaboration, with entrants in 2018 coming from as far afield as York, Manchester and Northumberland.
If you’re not competition ready yet, fear not, limited tickets spectator tickets are available with all proceeds being donated to Only A Pavement Away, and if you fancy entering for 2020 there’s plenty of time to practice with our eggcellent recipe below.
Ingredients
- 1 free range high welfare hens egg – 125g pork sausage meat – 15ml milk – 15g ‘Panko’ Japanese style breadcrumbs – 15g plain flour – 10g Pistachio – 10g dried apricot
Method
- Boil a deep pan of salted water until it comes up to a rolling boil.
- Gently place an egg into the water using a spoon, be careful not to break the egg, leave to boil for 6 and a half minutes for a soft yolk or 8 minutes for hard yolk, if available quickly remove the egg and cool in an ice water bath, if you don’t have ice, place straight into a freezer to stop it from continuing to cook.
- When cold, peel and set aside.
- Toast the pistachios in the oven until lightly golden brown, crush lightly between a blade of a knife and a chopping board,
- Roughly chop the apricot
- Mix the pork sausagemeat, apricot, pistachio and salt and pepper together in a mixing bowl,
- Gently form the sausage meat into a cm deep disc shape on a chopping board,
- Place the egg into the centre of the sausage meat patty, and roll up, turn in the ends and form gently by hand into an egg, ensuring all the egg white is covered by meat,
- Place the egg into the fridge to harden up the meat and make it easier to handle in the next steps,
- In three separate bowls, prepare one bowl of plain flour, one bowl of milk, one bowl of breadcrumbs,
- After the egg has set in the fridge for 10 minutes, you will now go through the ‘Pane’ stage, first, gently coat the egg in flour, covering all of the meat, then wash in the milk (egg yolk and milk works very well if you are doing a worthwhile amount of scotch eggs, but wasteful if just doing one or two portions), then coat in breadcrumbs.
- Depending on how happy you are that the egg is completely covered in breadcrumbs, you can repeat the previous stage to add more and coat better.
- Cool in the fridge again to make more durable before the next step,
- Heat up 1/2 cm of vegetable oil in a frying pan and when hot gently turn the egg constantly in the oil until the breadcrumbs are golden, ( a deep fryer is quicker and safer but as long as you take your time a frying pan is perfectly safe, but be careful spitting oil)
- After you are happy the breadcrumbs are golden brown, place on a baking tray into a preheated oven at 180’c for approx. 10 minutes, depending on the depth of the sausagemeat and the strength of your oven this can take up to 15 minutes, just ensure the core of the meat has reached 75’c used a foodsafe thermometer
- Allow to cool – served best with matured homemade piccalilli