Got Nog?
On Christmas Eve my dad always make’s egg nog. This year, since the Rachlin Family Christmas was deferred, he made it on New Year’s Eve.
I am a HUGE fan of homemade egg nog, but it saddens me that almost no one has tried it. Store bought egg nog is, of course, well sampled by the general public. In my opinion, it’s basically equivalent to melted ice-cream in a carton. Real egg nog is actually quite fluffy, and much more delicious. Real egg nog also includes…get ready for this…eggs, raw ones in fact. This basically explains why you can’t buy it anywhere.
To make a generous quantity of real egg nog, you begin with a carton of eggs, and separate out the whites from the yolks. You then add a cup of sugar, 1/2 a teaspoon of salt, and 2 cups of brandy and/or cognac to the yolks. After refrigerating the eggs for a few hours, you whip the whites, and separately whip 3 pints of heavy cream. You then fold the cream into the yolks, then fold in the whites. You may then want to thin the final mixture with milk.
This tried and true recipe recently appeared in the Times, along with some crazy new recipe that involves pear brandy and Roquefort cheese.
I only have homemade egg nog once a year, so I’m in no hurry to mix things up with some hip new recipe. You, however, probably have homemade egg nog no times a year, so you should really do something about that.
If you absolutely refuse to eat uncooked eggs, you should at least try adding homemade whipped cream and brandy/cognac to the store bought stuff. Another thing you can try is adding a small amount of store bought egg nog to ginger ale (preferably Vernors. This isn’t anything like homemade egg nog, but someone recently made this beverage for me and it was a lot like drinking an ice cream float.