Scotch Eggs - Illtud Dafydd

Thanks to Illtud, one of our farmers' market shoppers for sharing his scotch egg recipe with us. 

Scotch eggs could well be a staple of your food intake for the week, part of your children’s lunchbox, in your fridge to snack on between meals, but have you ever thought about making them yourself. Tair Onnen resident Illtud Dafydd explains his Scotch Egg recipe, using only produce bought from our Cowbridge Farmer’s Market.

I’ve been making scotch eggs for a couple of years now, I was living in France and believe it or not the Scottish delicacy could not be found anywhere in a small town of no more than 20,000 people in the centre of France, so I went ahead to make a batch. My recipe hasn’t changed at all since those days but the produce I’ve used since there has evolved from the marché near Clermont-Ferrand to Cowbridge’s farmers market.  First up I bought 480 grams of pork sausage meat from Caermynydd, the Penuwch prodcuer are always a reliable source of high quality, delicious pork produce that are often found at vale markets as well as other markets across Wales. You could by a pack of sausages but I find buying sausage meat in one pack is easier to prepare with, which I’ll come to later. Buying half a dozen pullet eggs from Tyncala was the next stop at £1.50 for six which would end up making twelve scotch eggs. You can, as I have in the past experimented with duck eggs as well as hen eggs, the duck eggs have a richer texture which gives the Scotch Egg a richer texture.

Start with hard boiling the eggs, I personally prefer half-boiled, with the hope that the yolk is still a bit runny for consumption, free range eggs take longer to boil than indoor bread hen eggs. Once the eggs have cooled peel the shell and discard, put the eggs to one side after cutting the six in half so you have 12. The bread I used for breadcrumbs was a frozen loaf from the market a few weeks back, after defrosting I whizzed them with a food processer. Cover a pastry board with plain flour, the more the merrier so the sausage meat doesn’t stick to the board nor your hands. Flour a rolling pin and roll the sausage meat out flat with a thickness of no more than 2cm. You can always keep your meat thicker if that’s what you prefer, but the scotch eggs will take longer to cook through and will be denser when eating.Place each half an egg with around 1cm of radius of meat left around it then wrap the egg totally with sausage meat, repeat this 12 times making sure to keep adding flour to the sausage meat and your palms so they do not stick.Whisk an egg in a bowl, then one by one dunk the bare Scotch egg in the whisked egg before covering it with bread crumbs, repeat this for each scotch egg. Cover a baking tray with flour and cook the scotch eggs at a heat of 180C four an hour. Once the bread crumbs have browned and crisped, leave on a cooling tray to cool. They are best eaten fresh because of the crispiness of the breadcrust but keep chilled in the fridge otherwise.

On the whole each scotch egg cost 64p and they didn’t take more than a couple of hours to prepare and bake, which made for a quite a productive and tasty afternoon!