How NYC's Best Scotch Egg is Made

Bon Appétit

Bon Appétit joins Chef Ed Szymanski of Lords, an English-style bistro in New York City, to make his version of a perfect scotch egg. From achieving the perfect fudgy yolk to mastering the golden, crispy exterior, every step focuses on balancing the ideal egg-to-sausage ratio. As a staple on their menu, where hundreds are crafted daily, it’s safe to say Lords have perfected their formula.

Transcript

00:00Hi, my name is Ed Shemaiski. I am the chef and owner of Lourdes in New York City and today we

00:12are making our perfect version of a scotch egg. Lourdes is our take on a modern British bistro.

00:20It's a bright vibrant cuisine, not the stodgy grey and brown British food of a generation ago.

00:27A scotch egg at its core is a boiled egg wrapped in sausage, breaded and deep fried. We serve it with

00:34a madras style curry paste, fresh lamb sausage. It's a really craveable bite. First thing we're going to

00:39do is start preparing our eggs. We're going to soft boil the eggs. A bad version of a scotch egg has a

00:48hard grey egg yolk and we like the nice soft runny yolk. So we're going to drop these beautiful blue

00:53happy eggs into salted boiling water and they'll cook them for six minutes and 20 seconds. We make

00:58hundreds of these a day, thousands a week, tens of thousands a year, exactly six minutes and 20

01:04seconds. Start the timer the second we drop them in. Timer is going off, eggs come out. Straight into the

01:12iced water please. Ice water stops the cooking process. When I say soft boiled I want a slightly runny

01:19yolk. We don't want it to be liquid because when you cut into the scotch egg it'll just flow everywhere.

01:22You want it to still have some softness and gooeyness to it but you don't want it to be soup. Yeah,

01:27this is perfect. Next we're going to make the curry paste for the sausage. So the scotch egg gets

01:34wrapped in a sausage, sort of what makes it a scotch egg. And ours is flavored with this really nice

01:39sort of like mildly spiced curry paste. We'll start by sort of dicing this shallot. We're going to sweat it

01:44in some butter, sort of a nice amount of shallots. We'll use fresh ginger instead of dried. It's got a really

01:50nice bright spiciness to it but it's not too intense. And a couple cloves of garlic as well.

01:59Now we have our vegetables. So start the pan. We're going to melt our butter.

02:05And we're going to toast everything, sort of bring out the aromatic qualities of it. So

02:09get some heat into the ginger and the shallots and the garlic really start smelling delicious.

02:14And all of this is just going to flavor our sausage. This is what makes it so delicious.

02:19You don't want just ground meat, pork or lamb or whatever it is, because it's a chance to bring

02:24more flavor into the dish. Shallots go in and sort of fry these in the butter.

02:30When you're cooking alliums in particular, add salt at the beginning to draw out some of the moisture.

02:36We diced the shallots, the garlic and the ginger up to be roughly the same size. So they'll cook at

02:41around the same speed. At this stage, it looks like too much butter. When we add the curry powder,

02:46you'll see all of that excess butter is going to be needed to toast the curry powder evenly.

02:50We can see the alliums and ginger is starting to brown a little bit around the edges. That's where we

02:56want to stop this process. And we'll stop it by adding the curry powder. We'll sprinkle this in.

03:03So the curry powder is a mix of turmeric, coriander, ground ginger, some dried red chili,

03:09fenugreek seeds as well. And it brings this amazing aroma to the dish. It smells so much more complex

03:16and nuanced than this would be if we just used a sort of dry pork sausage or something like that.

03:21This has so much depth of flavor to it. The curry powder here really like does play homage to the

03:27origin of the dish being the Nagisi kofta. It's an Indian recipe. The true version of the

03:32Scotch egg before it was brought back to UK and then breaded and sort of made much more bland and

03:39boring. Okay, this is nice and toasted now. I'm going to put it in this bowl to chill down.

03:44And once this is cool, we'll mix it in with our ground lamb. The lamb is true to the origin of the dish,

03:49the Nagisi kofta. And it's also interesting to offer something different than the standard pork

03:54sausage that comes with every Scotch egg. Lamb has a much grassier flavor than pork. It's a very sort of

04:01specific gaminess to it. American lamb has a sweetness to it as well that I think works very

04:06nicely with the spice elements in the sausage. Working this together, start to see the color change.

04:12Add a little pinch of salt. We'll finish working this together. Okay, this is ready to wrap our eggs in.

04:22All right, so these are peeled and now we're going to form our sausage patties between two pieces of

04:27cling film. If you have a tortilla press at home, this is a really good way of doing this. We want

04:32this sausage to be pretty thin. We're going to use this to wrap the egg with. Then we're also going to

04:36fill in any holes with more sausage. That's one of the best parts using sausage. It's quite sticky.

04:41So if something doesn't quite wrap properly, we'll add more. This is our first patty.

04:47Same thing here.

04:52So at every stage you want to be delicate with the egg because it's being cooked so that the yolk is still kind

04:56of soft and fudgy on the inside. Lay this in the middle and then gently form the sausage all around

05:06the egg. It's like you're tucking a newborn to sleep. Very gentle. The sausage is nice and emulsified

05:15so it will stick together. We want this to be fully sealed. You don't want to be able to see the egg

05:20through the sausage because if you do that, the egg is going to overcook by the time the sausage is ready.

05:26We're going to deep fry this entire thing. It's going to be at a very high temperature.

05:30So we want to make sure that the egg is somewhat protected from that by the sausage. You know,

05:33the sausage at this stage is raw, so it needs to cook, but the egg is fully cooked. It does not

05:37need to cook anymore. So the ratio of meat to egg is very important. We don't want the egg to cook

05:42any more than it already is. We just want it to warm through. Now I've got these two little sausages

05:49stuffed with egg. And now we're going to bread these. For the dredge, we are going to go into

05:55flour once. Then we're going to go into a mix of eggs and milk. Then we go into panko breadcrumbs.

06:01These are nice and crunchy. This is a classic breading technique. The flour sticks to the sausage,

06:09the egg sticks to the flour, and the breadcrumbs stick to the egg. We like using panko breadcrumbs.

06:14They have a really nice texture, but we're really coating this nice and evenly. And that is our egg.

06:20Again, that's just one layer of breadcrumbs. Now everything is ready. It just needs to be deep fried.

06:29I'll spend about six minutes in the fryer, and when they're nice and golden brown on the outside,

06:33we'll pull them out. We fry them at 350. The idea is to balance this beautifully cooked egg in the

06:40middle. So it doesn't need to get any more heat to it. It just needs to be warmed through. The sausage,

06:44which is raw, so it needs to be fully cooked through. And then the breading, which is at this stage raw too,

06:49it needs to get golden brown. So the thickness of the breading, the thickness of the sausage is all

06:54really important so that it cooks at the same rate. So when it's done, everything is hot and ready at

06:59the same time. Timing here is very important. You need to make sure you keep an eye on the fryer,

07:04and then you pull the eggs when they're golden brown. The good sign is that when the exterior is very

07:09sort of nut brown, golden brown on the outside, that it's cooked on the inside too. See at this stage,

07:15it is still not ready. All right, they're looking nice and golden brown. Now we're going to take

07:20them out and drain them. And by the color, you can tell, you know, the breadcrumbs are nice and

07:27cooked on the outside. Then we cut into the sausage, you're going to see it's nice and warm,

07:31cooked through, and then that egg should just be sort of a little bit warmer than body temperature.

07:35So we'll start by plating up the herb crème fraîche sauce, provide some nice cooling relief from the spice

07:41of the sausage. And now we'll slice our egg. You can see that runny yolk on the inside. We'll finish

07:50with a little bit of salt, crack some pepper over it. And this is the Lord's Scotch egg. This looks

07:57delicious. You can see the egg is just set, the sausage fully cooked, and then the breading around

08:01the outside, perfectly cooked as well, golden brown. So this ratio is great. You see the sausage is sort of

08:07evenly around the egg. And the egg itself is warm, but not ripping hot.

08:15The spice is warming. It's gingery. It works really nicely with the crunch of the breading,

08:21that creaminess from the egg, and then also the creaminess from the crème fraîche sauce on the

08:25bottom, which has the mint and the chives in it to keep it really nice and fresh and vibrant. This has a

08:31way of being both a new flavor, but also something very comforting at the same time, very familiar.

08:36I could eat a dozen of these.

08:41Then look down at them, fold them towards me and look down at them.

08:45These are my children. Great, perfect. My eggs.

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