Make Tik Tok Star Poppy O’Toole’s Homemade Scotch Egg For The Holidays

Chef Poppy O’Toole’s (a.k.a. Tik Tok’s “queen of potatoes”) new cookbook Poppy Cooks: The Actually Delicious Air Fryer Cookbook launched last month, featuring more than 100 new recipes for meat, fish, spuds and sides, and sweet treats. With so many people bound to receive air fryers as gifts over the holidays, it’s full of great ideas for festive meals, and beyond. Try Poppy’s recipe for scotch eggs from the book, below. —Vita Daily

Homemade Scotch Egg

This is a throwback to one of the first dishes I made in my first ever kitchen job. Shout- out to the Scotch eggs of The Queen’s Head Inn, Bromsgrove, that I’d make time and time again back in 2011. I wish we’d had an air fryer to speed up the process for equally delicious results. Makes. 4.

4 whole eggs, plus 2 extra, beaten
500g/about 1lb sausagemeat
½ teaspoon dried mixed herbs
½ teaspoon garlic powder
2 tablespoons plain/all purpose flour
200g/4 cups Panko breadcrumbs
salt and ground black pepper

Heat the air fryer to 130°C/270°F. Put the 4 whole eggs in the air-fryer basket and cook them for 9 minutes, which will be just enough to soft-boil them. Meanwhile, prepare a bowl of ice-cold water. Once the time is up, transfer the eggs to the icy water and leave to cool (about 5 minutes). Once cool, peel them and set aside. In a bowl, mix the sausagemeat, dried herbs and garlic powder with your hands until it forms a paste-like consistency. Season with salt and pepper. Using kitchen paper, dry the peeled eggs. Gather three bowls. Season the flour and tip that into one bowl. Add the beaten eggs to the second, and the breadcrumbs to the third. Using one quarter of the sausagemeat mixture, mould the meat around one of the boiled eggs as evenly as possible, aiming for the same thickness all the way around. Repeat so that all the eggs are covered in sausagemeat. Heat the air fryer to 180°C/350°F. One by one, dip the wrapped eggs first in flour (dusting off any excess), then in the beaten egg and finally in the breadcrumbs to coat fully. Put the eggs into the air-fryer basket and cook for 12 minutes, until the sausage is cooked through and the coating is golden. Try using different meat minces to make the coating; or if you’re wanting veggie, use a meat alternative. Best way to serve? Hot and straight out of the air fryer with some piccalilli and a bag of crisps – just like being at the gastro pub.

Excerpted from Poppy Cooks: The Actually Delicious Air Fryer Cookbook by Poppy O’Toole. Copyright © 2023 Poppy O’Toole. Photographs by Haarala Hamilton. Published by Appetite by Random House®, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.