One of the participants on the recent Ghent beer trip was David Constable, who runs a wonderful blog Forevereggslporing.com. It focuses solely on the scotch egg.

Inspired by David, who gave me some tips, I tried my hand at making my own. First results were very encouraging, but next time I’ll try to get the casing thinner and the yolk runnier. These were totally delicious, even without runny yolks – the egg was really soft and the outside nicely crunchy. I had to give one egg to the dogs because the sausage meat wasn’t cooked enough, though.

The recipe is very simple. I took four eggs, placed them in a pan, brought them to the boil and let them cook for 6 minutes. Then I cooled them for a few minutes in cold water, before peeling them. Six minutes was a guess; next time I will try 4. And I might use smaller eggs: these were medium.

I then cased them in sausage meat. I used some speciality sausages – pork and leek, and pork and chorizo (both worked well) – and removed their skins. Using 2.5 sausages for each egg, I made the casing by flattening the sausage meat with my hand, and then covering each egg with a thin layer – as thin as I could get and still have complete coverage. I’ll try to get it thinner next time.

I then covered the casing with beaten egg and rolled it in breadcrumbs. I made these using white bread, dried out a bit, and put into a food blender. It works well (you can dry the bread out by part toasting it). Apparently sour dough works really well.

Then I deep fried each egg in vegetable oil for about 10 minutes. We don’t have a deep fat fryer, so I used about three quarters of a litre of oil in a thick bottomed pan. I rolled the eggs around a bit because I didn’t put enough oil in to cover them completely.

Wine match? I had them with beer – a Brewdog Punk IPA, which worked well – but I also reckon they’d go well with a fresh Crozes-Hermitage or a decent Beaujolais. A rich Chardonnay wouldn’t be disastrous, either.