Pickled Eggs

One of the easiest of all pickles, pickled eggs are a bit like Marmite™ - you either love 'em or hate 'em!

I'm not a great lover of them, but a while back, one night in the pub, a couple of hair-brained ideas came about - like they do! Firstly, for a smoked picked egg and, secondly, a more ambitious Scotch Picked Egg; a pickled egg, possibly smoked, in sausage-meat, coated in breadcrumbs and fried. If I remember correctly, there was also mention of black-pudding in the coating, at some stage of the conversation!

Given that you can't make either without first pickling an egg, here's how it's done.

Firstly hard-boil some eggs; how you do it is up to you. I bring the eggs to a boil in a pan of water, boil them for just 30 seconds, turn the heat off and leave them for 18 minutes in the hot water before putting them into very cold water to cool before peeling. I find that doing it this way, they don't get the grey ring around the yolk that they often do if boiled more vigorously.

Boil your vinegar of choice, malt, spirit or wine with some pickling spices and leave to cool; I used a mix of spirit and malt vinegars with some bought pickling spice with added dried chilli.

When the vinegar is cool, put the eggs into a sterile jar and cover with the vinegar. Leave for a couple of weeks before use.