Devil Deans

A while back I had an idea to combine two of my favorite things: deviled eggs and breakfast sausages. It's also possible that I came up with the name "Devil Dean" and thought it sounded cool so I went ahead and made up a breakfast food that would work with it. The name is basically shorthand for Devil(ed Egg and Jimmy) Dean (brand breakfast sausage). In the end I had a hard time finding Jimmy Dean in Harlem so it's just normal sausage - think of it as a sort of poetic license.

In a normal deviled egg, the egg white serves as a vessel for the devilishness. But why couldn't the egg white itself be wrapped in something? My original plan for the Devil Dean was to have a "shell" made out of sausage, which would wrap around the egg white, which in turn would contain the devilishness as per the normal construction of a deviled egg. See the diagram of "Devil Dean Mk. I," infra.

I thought this would be great, but in practice it was difficult to get the sausage rigid enough to serve as a proper meatcup. I tried to cook it by placing the egg-half upside down and covering it with the sausage, then broiling that, but it just turned into a greasy mess and the sausage flopped off the second it was turned upright. I declared the operation a failure and put Devil Deans on the back burner.




A year later I dug the Devil Dean out of its shallow grave and created the first successful version. See the diagram of "Devil Dean Mk. II," supra. Instead of trying to make a meatcup, I simply cooked the sausage up and placed it in the devilishness. This wasn't as awesome, strictly speaking, but it was much more structurally sound. Not as much of a feast for the eyes but easier to shovel into your craw. It also sidesteps two nagging concerns that haunted the development of the Devil Dean Mk. I - the specter of greasy fingertips and baseless allegations that it was a ripoff of a Scotch egg.




The Devil Dean Mk. II was a huge success and I personally destroyed probably about 8 or 10 of these bad boys. But I don't think my work is done. The future looks bright for Dean development. What is in store for the Devil Dean Mk. III and beyond? Some ideas:

- the dean is hidden under the devilishness so when you bite in it's like a surprise
- find and use actual Jimmy Dean brand sausage
- retry Mk. I-style meatcup construction
- incorporate cheese