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Spicy pickled eggs recipe

Posted by on Thursday 18 November 2010 in cooking, preserving, recipes | 5 comments

Keen to preserve some of the summer glut of eggs and add to the super-spicy items in our store cupboard (we never have enough!), I’ve pickled a few lots of eggs over the last few months.

We finally cracked open the spicy batch earlier this week – yum! Between the tart vinegar and the spices, they’re really quite strongly flavoured – but good. We had them with bread & cheese, instead of a chutney, and they were perfect for adding a bit of bite to the proceedings.

(Apologies for the not great photo – the full jar looked ace but then we ate half of them!)


Spicy pickled eggs recipe

To fill a 2lb jar (we used an old pickled peppers jar from Lidl, kindly donated by Strowger)

Ingredients
8 large eggs (not super-fresh ones – use ones that are at least a week old so they’re easier to peel)
450ml of pickling vinegar (white vinegar, at least 6% acidity)
2tsp black pepper corns
2tsp yellow mustard seeds
1tsp dried chilli flakes

Method

0. Sterilise your jar – wash it in hot soapy water, rinse well in hot clean water, then place in the oven at 160C/gas mark 2 ish, for about 15 minutes. The lid of the jar should be washed and rinse – it needs to be a vinegar proof lid (plastic lined).

1. Hard boil the eggs using your preferred method – if you don’t have one, obey Delia. Cool them as Delia says then remove the shells.

2. Add the vinegar and spices into a small saucepan. Stir together and bring to the boil. Simmer for a couple of minutes – with a door/window open because man, it stinks.

3. While the vinegar is simmering, place the eggs in the still-warm jar then when it’s done, pour the vinegar on top of it, making sure the spices pour along with it and don’t all stick to the side of the pan. Fill the jar to the very top then seal it.

4. Leave somewhere cool and dark for at least three weeks.

Once they’re ready to eat, have them as a part of a salad, with bread & cheese like we did, or make them into a really interesting tasting egg mayonnaise!

Have you made this? What did you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

5 Comments

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  1. Taphophile

    Looks absolutely delicious and would love to try it – we are often egg recipients and baking isn’t always an option to “preserve” them. What, though, is pickling vinegar? Ordinary vinegar as opposed to a wine or cider vinegar? White? Malt?

    • louisa

      Hi Taphophile!

      I’d never really thought about it actually – it’s just called “pickling vinegar” on the bottle… I suspect it’s some sort of strong distilled white vinegar. Apparently any white vinegar, with an acidity of 5% or more, is fine for pickling and white wine vinegar gives a less harsh taste than most (which would be good for these, but not for me as I don’t like the wine-y quality).

      Hope that helps a bit!

      -louisa :)

  2. Phil

    Hi louisa

    Thanks for this, pickling has been one of those “on my to do list” things but i’ve never got round to having a look at how.

    Just one question how long do you think these would last in storage?

    Kind Regards

    Phil

    • louisa

      Hi Phil,

      I think most people say up to six months as a guide line – the remaining eggs must always be covered with vinegar too.

      I prefer to make many smaller jars (2lb-ish ones) rather than, say, gallon ones because it’s easier for me to put aside that amount of eggs (8 or 9) at a time and also, I like doing different flavour combinations. At that size, I find that once opened, they disappear quite quickly!

      -louisa:)

  3. Molly

    Hi Louisa, this recipe looks really good! I am unclear on how you store these. Do you keep them in the fridge for that long? have you ever canned them? I’m looking for canning recipes for hard boiled eggs. do you have any or a favorite?

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