Semiserious Chefs

A couple days ago, Vanessa and I had a sudden stroke of genius. A fortuitous turn of events. She said something (I don’t remember what) that gave us the inspiration for a new recipe. While it might not be a new recipe for some folks, it’s definitely new for us. That’s right, she laid the groundwork and I…well I did what I do best. I took the names of two popular dishes and smashed them together like a champ. It’s one of my few skills.

The only problem is, now Vanessa keeps wanting to call them Deviled Eggs Benedict Cumberbatch. I really don’t know what to do with that.

What I do know however, was that I would need to start experimenting with this idea. So I grabbed some eggs from the refrigerator and set out to create some sort of new masterpiece.

*Side note: Why is ‘fridge’ spelled with a ‘d’ but refrigerator isn’t?

Okay, so maybe masterpiece is too strong of a word. The idea was simply to take deviled eggs and make them taste like eggs Benedict. But how could I go about making that happen? That was the big question.

The Hollandaise sauce part seemed easy enough. And by Hollandaise sauce, I just wanted something that tasted like it. After all, it’s nothing but egg yolks, butter, and a little lemon juice. The hard boiled eggs would give me the egg yolks I needed, so I could scratch that off the list. And of course lemon juice. Have to have the lemon juice.

I think the trick was going to be adding enough liquid to counter act the dryness of the egg yolks, so that the filling for the boiled egg whites not only tasted like eggs Benedict, but was also just as creamy as deviled eggs. The problem I found, is that butter just wasn’t going to work in this situation. No worries though, that was easily swapped out with some mayonnaise which worked just fine. Easy enough. so far, I was on a roll.

The hard part about all of this was trying to figure out how I could incorporate the Canadian bacon, and most importantly the sort of sourdough flavor from the English muffins. I don’t know if it would be considered a sourdough flavor or more of a slightly bitter taste.

Either way, I wanted to try and get that flavor involved because it’s a part of what makes eggs Benedict what it is. But upon careful consideration, I might have to come back and edit this page if I can’t find an acceptable place for the English muffin.

*Edit – Vanessa has come up with a nice work around. We wanted a way to provide a little crispiness like you get with genuine eggs Benedict. So she suggested chopping up the English muffins and toasting the pieces in melted butter. It was a perfect solution I feel.

The first batch of eggs I experimented with tasted good, but didn’t have the right consistency, due to the fact that I put too much butter in with the egg yolks in an attempt to get them to blend in the food processor. The first attempt was definitely not what I wanted at all.

In fact, butter was a horrible choice. So from now on, we will only be using butter to brown the English muffins. I don’t know what I was thinking.

Fresh lemon juice is the key, but don’t get carried away with it because it can quickly overpower everything else. I’m not warning all of you about that, more so than I am reminding myself, because I can get out of control amazingly quick when it comes to lemon juice. It doesn’t matter what I’m making. If the recipe calls for lemon juice, I simply have no internal mechanism whatsoever that might shut off the flow of said juice.

But it is what it is. Or as the french would say, mais c’est que c’est. Okay, I really don’t know if that’s something they would actually say, but it translates correctly and it sounds good to my ears.

So now, I only had to incorporate some sort of ham into the dish. I could use some good old Canadian bacon, or I could keep it simple by purchasing some diced ham. But should it go on top or should it go in with the egg yolks and lemon juice? Decisions, decisions.

Eventually, convenience won the day. I decided to go with the diced ham. Small cubes of ham to be exact – and throw them right in with everything else. It worked perfectly. The eggs looked nearly identical to deviled eggs, but totally had the Hollandaise flavor going on.

In retrospect, I think the Canadian bacon was a bit too thin. The diced ham adds just a little bit more substance in my opinion.

So there you have it everyone. Deviled Eggs Benedict. I don’t know if this is a real thing or not, but for us it is. Let us know what you think about it in the comments section below. I personally love Hollandaise sauce so this is a win for me. It looks and tastes pretty close, but there’s still a subtle hint of Deviled eggs. Anyway, enjoy and I look forward to the next recipe.