West Coast Scotch Eggs made with Fresh Salmon Sausage (2024)

There are methods of preparing and presenting food that transcend barriers of class, culture, and language. Universally loved, these are the kinds of recipes that make people from every corner of the world say "Oh yeah, we have a recipe like that too." Interestingly, a lot of these recipes are highly portable and shareable - the kind of thing that you'd bring on a picnic or buy while wandering through a fair or market. Meat-on-a-stick, for example. Every culture does a variation on meat-on-a-stick. When I set out to develop a recipe for this collaboration with BC Egg, I knew that I wanted to do a variation on the ever-popular Scotch egg. As it turns out, eggs-wrapped-in-something are food with a huge cross-cultural appeal. The Scotch egg (a hard boiled egg wrapped in sausage, breaded, and then fried) already comes in numerous regional variations within the UK. In the Netherlands and Belgium they're called vogelnestjes or eierbals and they're often served with a tomato sauce. In India and Pakistan, the delectable dish nargisi kofta(and vegetarian variations) is made very much the same way. The Oxford Companion to Food actually speculates that nargisi kofta may have given rise to Scotch eggs. In the Philippines there's tokneneng, which uses a fried batter to coat the eggs (no sausage though... man, that'd be good). Other recipes, like Italian polpettone and Hungarian Stefánia-vagdalttake the idea in a meatloaf direction, embedding boiled eggs in a savoury sausage loaf.

All of these variations on the theme are incredible, but I wanted to put my own distinctly personal and Pacific Coast spin on the recipe, so I turned my attention to... Cajun food. That probably doesn't sound like it makes any sense, but the basic thought process was as follows:

1) Scotch eggs would be good with salmon,
2) Replace pork sausage with salmon sausage,
3) How the heck do I make a good salmon sausage?

I got stuck at number three for a little while there. Fortunately, Cajun food came to my rescue in the form of seafood boudin. To clarify, boudin is a French sausage usually made with pork, either with or without blood (the former making boudin noir, the latter boudin blanc), but a seafood-based variations and the use of rice are distinctly connected to the cooking of the Acadiana region of the US Gulf Coast. With a little help from the master of kicking things up a notch, Chef Emeril Lagasse, I was able to adapt a seafood boudin recipe to wild BC salmon. After that, I turned my attention back across the pond and started adapting from Chef Jamie Oliver's fantastic traditional Scotch egg recipe, modified for baking. And there you have it - a classic UK snack, possibly adapted from an Indian one, modified for Canadian Pacific ingredients, using Cajun-French cooking techniques. Around the world in a dozen eggs.

There's nothing terribly complicated to cover here, but I do have a few little notes on the specifics, plus one AWESOME tip.

I specify medium eggs here, and I realize a lot of people don't use them very often. Their smaller size makes them perfect for snacks and small meals, and in this case they yielder a slightly smaller and Scotch egg, which is nice. An extra large egg is pretty big already, and it becomes pretty gargantuan when wrapped in sausage. The smaller eggs also cook faster, so the boil time is fairly short. The eggs will continue to cook in the oven too, so the shorter boiling time helps you end up with a set, but not overly dry yolk. If you can't track down medium eggs, use large eggs and add a minute or two to the boiling time, plus a bit more time in the oven. You may find that you only have enough salmon sausage for 7 large eggs, so adjust there if you feel the need.

As for peeling eggs - well, this has to be one of the most talked-about food prep subjects in the food world. I've seen and tried so many tips over the years, but I'd never been particularly impressed by any of them. That is, until my wife (who is, as I've established before, the master of ramen eggs in our house) told me about the shaken-pot method. It's quite simple: take your cooked and cooled eggs and place them in an empty pot (the one you cooked them in should be the right size). Add about an inch (2.5 cm) of water to the pot. Put the lid on and give the whole pot a careful but relatively firm shake/spin. I say 'shake,' but don't go all paint-mixer on them. Hold the pot in two hands and give it a few quick horizontal rotations (like a turntable), with just a bit of vertical movement to jostle the eggs. You're aiming to thoroughly crack all the shells, not make crunchy egg salad. After about 10 seconds, pop the lid off and you should find a batch of eggs with extensively cracked and rather loose shells. If they're not cracked enough, put the lid back on and shake a bit more vigorously. When you're done, the shells should peel away from the eggs very easily. Rinse them under running water to remove any clinging bits of egg shell, then set them aside for the next step.

When it comes to nutritional on-the-go food, these are AMAZING. With nutritious proteins and fats and very few carbs, they're filling and a good source of all-day energy.

The eggs are great, but only as healthy as their serving partners. Don't overdo it on the add-ons (though you can generally go nuts on the pickles) and you'll be fine. If you're deciding on sauces, note that mustard is almost devoid of calories. Mayo is decidedly not.