How To Make Scotch Eggs

Do you like eggs? Do you like sausage? Do you like things that are fried? If you like eggs and you like sausage and you like things that are fried, I think you would like Scotch Eggs, if you have not already tried them, because a Scotch Egg is a wondrous, wondrous thing indeed. It's an egg, wrapped in sausage, coated in bread crumbs, and fried to within an inch of its life. I am afraid that it is basically the Turducken of the British culinary world.

Look, we should pause right now so that I can tell you that Scotch Eggs are not particularly healthy. You may have gathered that already, what with all the talk of "egg" and "sausage" and "fried," but I need you to put that aside for just a little while, so that you might more accurately discover how incredibly delicious a Scotch Egg is when you do it right.

Earlier this year, I decided to make Scotch Eggs as a New Year's present for my friends Alison and Nathan. I like Alison and Nathan very much, so much so that last March---after trying and failing to describe Scotch Eggs to them properly---I bought some in a supermarket in England and risked deportation to bring them into the U.S.  Did you know you're not allowed to bring meat products across international borders? I guess I hadn't really ever thought about it before, so it was with much trepidation that I trembled past the customs officials at San Francisco airport, having caught sight of the NO MEAT PRODUCTS TO BE BROUGHT ONTO U.S. SOIL sign juuuuust a little bit too late. No officer, I swear; no bags of heroin buried in my luggage! Just don't search for the sausage meat!

The smuggled supermarket Scotch Eggs were such a success that I decided to try my hand at making my own, which was something I didn't even realize you could do until last Christmas, when my mother taught my brother Tom how to whip up a batch. "Wait, you can....make these?" I asked her, incredulous. Thirty-one years I've known this woman and now she shows me how to make Scotch Eggs? "Of course!" she said. "You just need sausage meat, eggs, breadcrumbs, and oil."

So there you have it. You will need:

* 16oz sausage meat (I used this one by Jimmy Dean)

* 4 eggs (plus an extra one, beaten)

* About a quarter cup of bread crumbs

* A couple of inches of oil (I used canola) in a big pan

1. First of all, you boil the eggs until they're hard; I think I did it for around eight minutes. Then you peel them and put them to one side.

2. Next comes the gross part. Divide your sausage into four sections and wrap each section around an egg. Yes, it's just as horrifying as it sounds. You are basically making a sphere of meat.

3. Try not to think about it. Instead think about how delicious it's going to taste when these Scotch Eggs are cooked. Do not think about the fact that you just called something a "sphere of meat."

3. Dip each sphere of meat---whoops!---into the beaten egg and then into the breadcrumbs to coat. There's something kind of weird about dipping an egg into another form of egg, isn't there? It's like cannibalization or something.

4. Turn the heat up high with your oil in the pan. Drop your sausage-covered eggs in there and let those babies fry. Yes, you are indeed deep-frying something in your own kitchen. Oh my god, you belong at a carnival.

5. With a long fork or something, keep turning the eggs around in the oil so that they get evenly cooked and coated. Once the breadcrumbs are a deep golden color, turn the heat off and remove the eggs from the pan.

6. Slice them open. Egg and meat surprise! Somebody alert Ron Swanson!

So, there you have it: homemade Scotch Eggs in a few easy steps. I have either just totally grossed you out, or I have become your new hero. Tough to say.