Troubleshooting Scotch eggs - soft boiled and duck eggs

  1. Soft boiled - any tips to avoid breaking the white when wrapping?

  2. Duck eggs - what’s your preferred method to boil? I’m debating pressure cooker vs steamed vs sous vide. I usually steam chicken eggs, 12 minutes for hard boiled. What times would be recommended for soft and hard boiled duck eggs? Any tips on pressure cooking? I’ve read 4 minutes pressure plus 4 minutes release. And sous vide? What would be your approach?

I don’t know if that will take you to my specific post, if not buried in there was my most recent and only scotch eggs experience. It sucked!! Not the flavor or yummyness of the finished product, but I honestly went through about a dozen eggs to get 6(?) finished products. Wrapping them was a very frustrating experience, I’m sorry I don’t have any tips from you except wait and see if you can find them to eat out and save yourself the heartache and many, many, many broken eggs. Good luck! Post your results.

Ha! I actually make them weekly with chicken eggs and haven’t found them too much of a hassle. Soft boiled are a little harder to peel but patience helps, hard boiled are a cinch. I usually use hard boiled but have recently developed a taste for soft boiled and encountered this new issue.

I use the steamer function on my Instantpot and they peel beautifully, soft or hard.

I often link to this series as I find it wen researched and often has solutions to those questions the recipe books don’t.

I suspect the key to avoid breaking the egg is going to be mainly about how malleable the coating is. If it is quite soft it will envelope the egg quite easily. This article uses sausage meat and pork mince (for more fat) and rolls the meat out between glad wrap before coating a floured egg.

My personal tip is to use softer eggs if eating fresh out of the fryer as a runny egg is better warm. But if packing the egg to take on a picnic a slightly firmer egg works best.

Thanks! I think a thinner meat patty before wrapping is the solution so I’ll try actually rolling it out vs just squashing with my hands.

Peeling hasn’t been too much of an issue I just wasn’t sure about timing. I did 4 minutes high pressure, 4 minutes NR then QR so time will tell if they are soft or hard boiled :slight_smile:

Are quail eggs available in the US? They were in the mini scotch eggs canapes I had at a recent event here in the UK. The meat was flavoured with a touch of curry powder, the yolks were half-set, the coating had a proper crunch, and they were sensational.

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Yup! I almost bought them with the duck eggs, next time. So cute and fun to cook with. Next week, quail scotch eggs, great idea. I’ve only fried and poached them.

I used to buy them in cans, already cooked and shelled at the Asian Stores as decoration for my Asian style noodles.