Nothing goes better with the upcoming holiday season like a glass of creamy eggnog. And nothing is better than a glass of creamy homemade eggnog. Here's how to whip up a glass of your own - and fast.
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Signing UpStep 1: Gather the necessary ingredients.
This recipe is for one generous serving of eggnog. It can easily be multiplied to serve several people, without adjusting quantities. I have had success with up to a dozen servings at once, to fill a large punch bowl.
You'll need:
- 1 cup milk
- 1 large egg
- 1 tbsp. sugar
- 1/4 tsp. vanilla
- grated nutmeg, to taste
- 1 oz. alcohol of choice*, for the adult version
* Good choices include, but are not limited to: Brandy, Rum, Spiced Rum, Amaretto, Amaretto Cream, Irish Cream, etc, etc...
You'll need:
- 1 cup milk
- 1 large egg
- 1 tbsp. sugar
- 1/4 tsp. vanilla
- grated nutmeg, to taste
- 1 oz. alcohol of choice*, for the adult version
* Good choices include, but are not limited to: Brandy, Rum, Spiced Rum, Amaretto, Amaretto Cream, Irish Cream, etc, etc...
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I have made this a few times now, and I love it, because I’m not a big fan of the really fluffy eggnog, for which I found lots of recipes.
Also, these are ingredients I always have on hand, and it only takes a minute or two to whip it all together.
Oh, I always wash eggs really hot and with soap before I crack them, if I plan to ingest them raw.
According to the FDA, approximately 1 in 60,000 (uncracked) eggs have an imperfection AND exposure to allow them to become infected with Salmonella.
To put this into perspective, if you ate a raw egg every day of your life, the average person could live for more than 164 years and only encounter one "bad" egg.
For the vast majority of people, the Salmonella is nearly harmless, though a good enough dose of it will give you the runs. For the immune compromised (babies, elderly, people with immune deficiencies, etc.) it becomes considerably more dangerous, and potentially deadly (though it responds quite readily to antibiotics).
For the average person, even eating the 1 in 60,000 egg that IS infected will go unnoticed (unless the egg is particularly rotten, in which case, why are you eating it anyway?!)
The stringent laws passed regarding eggs and infection are actually due to food service businesses. These businesses would mix their ingredients in massive batches. It only takes 1 egg out of 60,000 to infect ALL the eggs in a batch, so you can see where this is going. Suddenly your entire batch of goods goes out and people who ARE immune compromised are no longer safe.
I've eaten raw eggs my whole life (never let an egg yolk go into the garbage!). While I don't want to know what my cholesterol levels look like, I can assure you that I'm still alive, though I'm still not 164 years old, yet.
Raw eggs are fantastic in a huge number of cooking uses. The yolks alone have incredible flavor, and the whites are used for a huge number of dishes.
As with many of the governmental germ scares (salmonella, mono, west nile, bird flu, swine flu, etc. etc. etc.) you can pretty much ignore them. 99 times out of 100 they're little more than someone trying to justify the reason they get a paycheck from the taxpayer.
If your egg is infected (ie: bad) it's very easy to tell. Dropping it in a cup of water, a "bad" egg will float to the top, as the gasses given off by the bacteria will offset the balance in the egg. Those that "try" to float are STILL good to eat (by any FDA standards) though, personally, I'd avoid eating them raw. Those that stand on-end or even settle to the bottom are completely fine. There's either NO bacteria in them, or not enough to be an issue.
Finally, eggs are designed (by nature) to prevent bacteria from entering the egg itself (I mean, let's face it, they come from a chicken's pooper. They don't have separate orifices. ) It really does take an extreme situation to get a "bad egg."
There's many other foodstuffs that are similar. Raw meat, for example got its bad name from ground beef. Freshly butchered beef/fish could easily be eaten raw unless it was VERY poorly butchered, and even then, a medium rare steak would kill any bacteria on the surface of the meat. The meat itself would resist "deeper" growth of the bacteria allowing even minor cooking to kill it off. Again, by the point that it gets "deep" enough to be of danger, you shouldn't be eating it anyway because the smell would make it obvious (to an extent... look up "dry aged" beef to see how NORMAL bacteria eating at the meat actually makes it BETTER!).
The big scare with infected meat is SOLELY because of ground beef. You grind up the beef, grinding any infectants INTO the beef and giving it PLENTY of surface area to attach to. Unless you grind your own beef, a medium rare burger can be a bad night. (Again, squirts at the worst.)
Okay, need to step off my anti-fear-mongering.
ENJOY your food! Your immune system was BUILT to let you!
E. Coli, Salmonella, staph, all of the buzzwords are, for the most part, utterly harmless. Worse case scenario, you get the squirts. (Though, to be fair, there are SOME (rare) antibiotic-resistant strains of staph that deserve true fear.)
Should we really avoid experiencing some of the best flavors in the world so as to resist a 1 in 60,000 chance of getting the runs? I would argue: no. Not to mention that the more we avoid any minor germ, the weaker our immune systems get... But now it's time to me to step off my soapbox...
Why are you sorry?
I have made this both with real eggs and fake pasteurized eggs. I wanted to make this for a party and knew some of the people wouldn't try it if they knew there was raw egg in it, so I bought pasteurized eggs that come in a carton. Unfortunately all they had were "80% reduced cholesterol made with real egg whites" eggs. The eggnog made with this turned out alright, but only foamed up about half as much as it did with real eggs. Even though it didn't taste as good, I think the people who hadn't already had it with real eggs though it was good.
but I'm craving eggnog quite badly right now! thanks for the recipe!
All I can say, Delicious!!
Whoops, I forgot the picture from earlier, sorry.
Thanks!
Note: If you want it hot, you will have to use a double-cooker (water bath) to bring the nog to tempt, then add the spiced rum for a good drink.