Eggs a la ESR

For no particular reason, my recipe for scrambled eggs.

Ingredients:

6 eggs
A heaping tablespoon of turmeric
A teaspoonful of chipotle powder
3 or 4 stalks of scallions
About 5 ounces (one large link) of andouille sausage

Tools:

One large non-stick frying pan
A glass measuring cup
A spatula and a sharp paring knife.
A fork or eggbeater for scrambling with.

Remove the sausage casing and mince the meat. Dice the scallions. Scramble the eggs in the measuring cup, mixing in the turmeric and chipotle powder.

Brown the sausage. Once it is evenly browned, pour the eggs over it and scramble everything with the spatula. Add the scallions as the eggs are beginning to solidify – not earlier or they will cook down too much.

A decent grade of chorizo works as well as andouille. Shallots will do instead of scallions and some people like that taste better, but if you do that cook the shallots down a bit in olive oil before browning the meat (and if you’re going to do that, adding some sliced mushrooms is not at all a bad idea). Hotter varieties may be substituted for the chipotle to good effect; on one occasion I made this with powdered scorpion peppers.

Makes a generous breakfast for two. We usually accompany it with Italian sourdough toast.

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Categorized as General

39 comments

  1. Sounds yummy. I just started adding sriracha (aka rooster sauce, an Asian chili sauce) to my scrambled eggs; that’s been pretty good.

  2. Pretty close to what I do, except I omit the sausage, unless I’m cooking only for me (and tend to sub in bacon then) – vegetarian girlfriend. Also, mustard powder, paprika and freshly course-ground black pepper (I tend to smash/chop it with a cleaver), and I do have a thing for garlic.

    Cook in a ring, add to a bagel with a decent cheese, and I eat it on the way. But that’s less relaxing.

    1. >Black pepper, on the other hand, sounds like a win.

      Especially if it’s fresh and coarse-ground. I wish somebody could explain to me why coarse-ground tastes so much better than the usual fine-powder pepper. I find the difference dramatic, and this puzzles me.

  3. That’s pretty close to my atomic breakfast (disclaimer, I am a serious chili head)

    I use a Philippine sweet but savory sausage called longaniza (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longaniza), depending on where you buy it it can be made out of just about anything. The consistent quality, no matter what you buy is that it is both sweet and savory at the same time. It comes in beef, pork, chicken and who the hell knows varieties.

    You need the sweetness to balance out what I mix in:

    – 1 tsp ground cayenne pepper
    – 1 tsp cumin (you can grind fresh cumin seeds, but they get stuck in teeth)
    – 1/2 chopped jalapeño (no seeds)
    – A few splashes of rice vinegar to balance out the sweet / savory stuff
    – 5 minced pickled onions
    – 1/2 cup minced cucumber

    You want to brown all ingredients, finely chopped in olive oil, strain them and set them aside. Meanwhile, you want to beat the eggs as if they were the high school bully that dunked your head in a toilet (if that never happened, insert some other music that causes you to beat eggs angrily). Just get as much air into them as you possibly can, it makes the eggs lighter when you taste them.

    Use a non stick frying pan if you have one, if not, get through it with butter with that piece of non stick stainless you just paid 5x more than the non-stick variety to own. You know who you are.

    Get the extremely aerated scrambled eggs down on a very hot pan first, as if you were making an omelette. Wait a few seconds, dump in your cooked ingredients and then start scrambling. You could add green bell peppers if you like, or even toss in corned beef hash.

    Garnish with scallions, parmesan and pepper.

    Also, don’t forget the bacon.

  4. Re: Black pepper: I expect that due to greater surface:volume ratio, the fine grain has more volatiles escape after grinding and before consumption. This is purely speculation. Experiment: bring peppercorns to the table and fine-grind it on the spot.

    1. >You do need a whisk.

      Have one. Have tried using it. Don’t think it adds value – but then, I like my eggs scrambled relatively hard rather than fluffy. The aeration effect from a whisk isn’t the direction I want to go.

  5. Great recipe…my variance is to add a tsp of garlic and to replace your sausage with a generous cupful of crushed crispy bacon.

    Whatever…..we clearly understand what breakfast/brunch is meant to be…..

  6. Nah…no whisk needed for this recipe

    Just keep moving stuff around with a ‘flat implement’

    It’s a real cowboy-cookin’ kinda thang…..

  7. I wish somebody could explain to me why coarse-ground tastes so much better than the usual fine-powder pepper

    Think about age and surface area/. The best option is to buy peppercorns and grind them yourself.

  8. I may try something like this. Thank you.

    But:

    ESR says: “We usually accompany it with Italian sourdough toast.

    Hmmmm . . . I can’t imagine eating something so good in anything other than fresh fragrant luscious yellow corn tortillas, freshly heated to aromatic perfection.

    I may need to broaden my palate palette.

    ESR says: “I wish somebody could explain to me why coarse-ground tastes so much better than the usual fine-powder pepper. I find the difference dramatic, and this puzzles me.

    Indeed! The difference is dramatic! When it comes to food (before eating): Oxidation bad. Fresh good.

    Hope this helps, or at least entertains.

  9. @Dagny

    Sriracha is a huge trend on Reddit, the problem is, there are two brands, the “rooster” and the “goose”. Here in the EU for some reason we only have the “goose” brand imported (from Thailand) and I don’t see why is it good. It tastes like hot garlic, but the garlic taste and the hotness are totally unrelated, it doesn’t have the kind of “hot taste” a good chili has, it is just simply a red garlic sauce that also happens to burn your mouth. And also it burns a bit too much, really that sort of thing just cannot be good for the guts & the other end. It was a pretty big let-down for me. Is the “rooster” version much better than the “goose”?

    1. >the problem is, there are two brands, the “rooster” and the “goose”

      The Rooster (Huy Fong) brand is common enough in the U.S. that some people here actually call sriracha “rooster sauce”.

      I’m not a huge fan myself, but I’ll use it if I want heat and nothing else is handy. I prefer habanero and Scotch-Bonnet-based sauces.

  10. @reader When it comes to food (before eating): Oxidation bad. Fresh good.

    Except for game, like deer, they are too hard when eaten fresh, they need to be aged a bit.

  11. @Tim: Longaniza ain’t Philippine, it’s Spanish. It’s a delightful meat addition to just about any non-sweet dish.

  12. Tried it this morning. As you might expect, real Nawlins andouille is a bit hard to find in the wilds of southern Minnesota, so we used three links (about 7 ounces) of Johnsonville andouille-recipe smoked sausage, minced in the food processor. Still not bad.

    Note to self: don’t just dump that tablespoonful of turmeric on top of the eggs in the cup before mixing. Took forever to de-lump.

    The predominant flavor was the sausage, which was a bit of a surprise. I was expecting a bit more…something from that much turmeric, but the main effect seems to be an afterburn.

    We do get real Mexican chorizo here, and we’ll try that tomorrow.

    1. >The predominant flavor was the sausage, which was a bit of a surprise. I was expecting a bit more…something from that much turmeric, but the main effect seems to be an afterburn.

      Good, you did it right. That’s exactly how the composition is supposed to work – the turmeric is not intended to be a foreground taste, but to add a gentle warming effect and enhance the spicy aftertaste from the sausage. If you want more up-front zap, use more chipotle powder or switch to a really hot variety like bhut jolokia or scorpion peppers.

  13. … I prefer habanero and Scotch-Bonnet-based sauces….

    Tried “Dave’s Hurtin’ Habanero” sauce yet?

    Outrageously delicious, with enough zap to get a pepperhead smiling.

  14. @ ESR I don’t do your spices but I love a bit of tasso ham & andouille in my eggs. My thing is really caramelized onions, sherry, tasso & boudin blanc, spiced w/cayenne & fresh thyme.

    @ Jay I live in Minneapolis & moved here from NOLA & Houma, Andouillie is more a Cajun rural thing vs NOLA style hot sausage. That said you can get a nice link here in Minneapolis at http://www.kramarczuk.com/ & http://www.clanceysmeats.com/ & if you do net shopping http://www.cajungrocer.com/fresh-foods-sausage-andouille-c-1_15_34.html?limit=all has a great selection.

    1. >Didn’t [the China study] screw up the methodology or something on that?

      Yes. Pretty seriously, as has been pointed out in the Amazon reviews. But I was expecting that – diet books written by “ethical” vegetarians and other food moralizers are invariably full of bullshit and bogons.

  15. Tony: I live in Fairmont, 120 miles from the Cities…but with that said, I get up there every so often, and a visit to Kramarczuk’s or Clancey’s Meats is not at all out of the question. Especially if I can get some good boudin, too. You haven’t seen a funny look till you describe boudin to a southern Minnesota farmer and express a craving for it…

    Hm. THat Cajun grocer site looks good, too. Have to try them when I get some money to do it with.

  16. Now I’m tempted to bring the German sausage I got from my hometown, to Penguicon, and contribute to a giant breakfast of this. (I wonder if WCC is still up for a roadtrip…)

  17. @Jay Maynard: I can get either chorizo or andouille in just about any of the grocery stores in my immediate area. But I live in Florida. :) OTOH, you should be able to get them at any store that specializes in Hispanic foods.There are probably several in the Twin Cities.

  18. Don’t (or try not to) break the yolks until the white is mostly cooked. Then take it off the heat and stir the yolks into the eggs, serving immediately.

  19. I’m glad I’ve got a significant other who can cook. Definitely going to have her try this.

  20. Feh. I don’t do pain, and I don’t care about the endorphin theory of mild burns.

    Scrambled eggs should contain eggs, period. I happen to like them with salt, and I don’t have salt-sensitive high blood pressure, so there you go.

    (This is not an argument against made dishes in general, just in this particular case.)

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