A Deep-Fried Eggstravaganza

I've been wanting to do this post for a while. . . My friend, Hal, has repeatedly requested deep-fried hard boiled eggs, and I thought that it'd be fun not just to deep fry a hard boiled egg, but to eggsperiment (See what I did there? Get used to it.) with all sort of types of eggs.

While Hal was visiting, we deep fried some hard boiled eggs with a Sunday morning breakfast. We initially tried both a pancake batter shell and a breadcrumb shell. The consensus was that the breadcrumbs were a better eggsterior, although in both cases, the actual egg tasted pretty much the same.

Eggsibit A: Hard boiled egg with pancake batter

Eggsibit B: Hard boiled egg with breadcrumbs Armed with that knowledge, for Easter this year, I decided to finally have the event I'd been looking forward to: an Eggstravaganza where I'd deep fry eggclusively eggs.

For the Eggstravaganza, I stuck with the flour, egg, and breadcrumb coating, but I planned a bunch of different varieties to try. I hard boiled six eggs to start, and turned two into egg salad and two into deviled eggs. The remaining two I saved for Scotch eggs, which I was quite eggcited to try.

The deviled eggs were made with a little mayonnaise, dijon mustard, and the egg yolks mixed together and put back into the egg whites, with a little paprika sprinkled on top. There are more eggsotic recipes out there, but I kept it simple.

To make egg salad, I diced up the eggs, added in mayo, mustard, relish, salt, pepper, and paprika. For both the deviled eggs and the egg salad, there are a lot of recipes out there. Just find one that looks good to you.

Once the eggs were prepared, I brought the oil up to temperature (375F). I carefully rolled the deviled eggs in the flour, egg wash and breadcrumbs. Then I put them in the oil for a couple minutes.

The eggs salad was a little tough to coat with batter because it kind of fell apart as I rolled it in the flour and egg wash. But once it got into the breadcrumbs, it could be reshaped into bite-sized pieces easily enough. They took just a couple minutes in the oil.

Eggsibit C: Egg salad

These were eggcellent. I think egg salad in a breadcrumb shell is a clear improvement on the egg salad sandwich. It didn't drastically change the egg however. And a few friends who sampled it enjoyed it as well.

Eggsibit D: Deviled eggs These were eggstraordinary. A few people tried them, and they were even better received than the egg salad. Everyone eggstolled their virtues. These were also ready in about 2-3 minutes. The yolks of the deviled eggs were what separated them from the egg salad. All of the real flavor was in one spot, surrounded with the egg white and a crunchy shell. The yolks were very soft and warm, while the egg white stayed a little cooler.

The Scotch eggs were the main course. For these, I removed the casing from two sausages, and I packed the meat all around two hard boiled eggs until none of the egg was eggsposed. One sausage was just about eggsactly the right amount of meat for one egg.

Eggsibit E: Scotch eggs

The first one I made was slightly undercooked (not something you want to do with pork!). Keep the egg in the oil for a while to really get it cooked through properly. For the second Scotch egg, I kept it in until the outer shell was really dark. That one was cooked though better, but I still could have it left in longer. I would recommend about 10 minutes to get it thoroughly cooked. Also, my deep fryer wasn't quite full enough to submerge the Scotch egg, so I had to keep rolling it around to make sure all of it got cooked.

The Scotch eggs were eggceptional. Sausage and egg is a great combination anyway, but this was eggstra tasty with the added crunch of the shell. Yet again, the egg is protected from getting too hot by the sausage eggsoskeleton surrounding it.

After the Scotch eggs, I wanted to eggspand into non hard-boiled eggs. So, I carefully poured the remaining egg wash (essentially scrambled eggs) straight into the fryer. It went crazy. It eggsploded, bubbling wildly, and then solidified into a layer on top of the oil.

Eggsibit F: Scrambled eggs
Despite how messy it looked, it was surprisingly easy to eggstract this clump of egg from the deep fryer, and it was just a super oily, overcooked mass of scrambled eggs. A few people tried it, but it was not a high-point of the evening. Whatever; I'm no eggspert.

The final test was cracking an egg and carefully pouring the insides straight into the oil. This one sunk all the way to the bottom, with small streams of egg white rising to the top. After a minute or so, it all floated up, and learning my lesson from the last attempt, I was careful not to over cook it.

Eggsibit G: Fried eggI removed this in good time (probably about a minute and a half), and it looked and tasted like a fried egg. The yolk was still runny, just like I like it. Also, after how the scrambled eggs turned out, I patted this one down with a paper towel to remove as much eggcess oil as possible.

Finally, I finished up with a Cadbury egg for dessert. It's a dessert I've made before, and it was eggsquisite, as always. I was a bit eggsausted at this point, so I didn't get another picture.

While I wish I could say I spared no eggspense and eggsplored all the possibilities, there are a lot more types of eggs, I didn't get to try. I also didn't think of eggplant until afterwards. But all in all, the event definitely eggceeded my eggspectations.