Ten Ways With Eggs

In 2019 I became an ambassador for the fledgling organisation The Real Food Campaign. One of the jobs I was doing within that was helping to create a resource of recipes and ideas for those wanting to switch to real food. Real food is all the things I am passionate about. It boils down to ‘good for you, good for the planet’, and it is one of the big steps that led me to set up Hope-for-Health.

Whilst working as an ambassador I wrote a series called ‘Ten Ways With…’, and I am slowly updating them. This is the one for eggs.

Good for us, and good for the planet

Eggs are definitely good for us, and if the chickens are treated well and fed well, then chickens and eggs can be good for the planet too. Maybe we can’t all go as far as keeping our own chickens (although I highly recommend it if you can; we had chickens in our back garden for fifteen years in total, and I do miss collecting their eggs and watching them peck about). But we can take small steps: buying local or organic, or even going in with some friendly allotment neighbours for a few chickens on the allotments.

Here are ten ways to cook your eggs, to give yourself a non-meat protein boost without ending up feeling everything is ‘too eggy’.

Simple eggs

1. Boiled. Medium or soft, with toast soldiers, or if you are trying to cut down on carbs, cucumber sticks (as my daughter prefers). Alternatively, peeled and smashed onto toast or onto a salad. Hard-boiled eggs work in a lunch box to eat whole, mashed with mayonnaise, or sliced and added to rice dishes or salads.

2. Poached or fried. Simple, quick and always reliable.

3. Scrambled. By themselves, or with cream and butter. Different people in my household say different things about these. You can leave them soft or cook them longer. Keep going long enough and you get what I call ‘crispy egg’, a bit like those crispy onion bits you can sprinkle on salad.

4. Baked or coddled. These are really traditional ways with eggs, yet few people now know them. Both involve breaking the egg or eggs into a small oiled dish. For baked eggs, the dish simply goes into the oven as it is; for coddled eggs, it is placed in a water bath before going into the oven. They can be topped with, or placed on top of, ham, spinach, or even cream or cheese, or left plain.

Eggs plus

5. Scrambled eggs, made into a meal. Take your simple scrambled egg and make it into a full meal by stirring in any of the following: cooked bacon or ham, cooked chopped vegetables (peppers, onions and leeks all work particularly well), cooked or raw mushrooms, or a sprinkle of cayenne or a dash of Tabasco.

6. Omelette, French or Spanish. Two totally different meals with the same name, in my opinion. Fill with whatever takes your fancy. A French omelette is a fast meal. A Spanish omelette takes a good while (an hour or more on the hob), as the potatoes should be cooked slowly in olive oil until tender before the egg is added, and the whole thing is then kept on a low heat to set.

Egg recipes

7. Quick Nigerian egg sauce. A fuller recipe version of adding to scrambled eggs, and quicker than the authentic version. Start with 2 plum tomatoes, half an onion, 1 red pepper and fresh chilli to taste (ideally Scotch bonnet for flavour, but only if you can happily tolerate the heat). Put them all in a food processor and whizz up. Add to some olive oil in a big frying pan and cook on a low to medium heat for 15 minutes until soft. Add 1 to 2 tablespoons of Nigerian curry powder (or Caribbean or Jamaican if you can’t find it) and a similar amount of smoked paprika. Add a little water or tinned tomatoes if needed, and stir. Then whisk up 4 to 6 eggs and pour them in. Keep stirring until it reaches your desired consistency, anything between a thick sauce and a firm scramble. Serves 2.

8. Egg fry. This is basically a stir fry of whatever suitable vegetables are in my fridge, with some good seasoning. I then add beaten egg in a slow, steady stream, stirring constantly, so I end up with tiny bits of egg that I cook until crispy. Then just pile the whole thing on a plate.

9. Yorkshire puddings and pancakes. Recipes people often don’t fiddle with, but they are very adaptable, and the egg quantity can easily be increased if you want it to be the main protein in a meal. I often use one egg per pancake, with only enough flour to hold it together and a little ground almond or another ground seed or nut to add further nutrition.

10. Eggs in smoothies. The ultimate way to add protein to your fruit and vegetable snack.

Eggs are one of the simplest real foods there are: affordable, quick and endlessly adaptable. Whether it is a soft-boiled egg with soldiers or a pan of egg sauce on a Saturday, there is usually an egg dish to suit whatever time and appetite you have.