The A.V. Club’s experimental eggnog test kitchen
Joel Penner/Flickr
Family, friends, time off work, and receiving gifts for doing nothing are a few of the reasons that people get excited about the Christmas season. For us, it’s the eggnog. We go eggnog crazy, to the point of noticeable weight gain and, on a few occasions, vomiting.
During the holiday season, we try to incorporate this sweet, yolky syrup into every meal. Sometimes it’s not enough to just have a glass of nog with your food, you actually want the taste of nog in your food. We’ve tried for years to find the best recipes using eggnog, and this valiant effort has given us a wealth of eggnog-related experience.
When cooking with eggnog, the most important thing to remember is this: All things minty should stay at least infinite miles away from eggnog. The candy cane may be another classic taste of Christmas, but like Jesus and Santa, these two are enemies, and no good will comes from forcing them together.
Eggnog at breakfast: This can be tricky. Putting it on cereal instead of milk will work like a charm, provided that you remember two things: the nog already has enough sugar in it to last a lifetime, so choose a cereal which isn’t already sweet, and by starting your day this way, you’ve taken the first step down the road to hell and diabetes. You may not be ready to make this plunge into self-loathing. Personally, we have no problem with it. It’s a fine way to start a day.
In pancakes: Here, you just replace the milk and eggs you would normally use in the batter with nog. These delicious eggnog flapjacks will definitely be the heaviest short-stack you’ve ever challenged yourself to eat, especially if you add bananas and chocolate-chips, which is highly recommended. What have you got to lose at this point? You’re probably not even wearing a shirt.
Eggnog bread: Surprisingly better than we anticipated. This is just standard bread-maker-made bread with some nog to replace the eggs. The bread itself didn’t taste like anything special, but the aroma of this loaf produced when baking was amazing. The scent of fresh bread with a hint of that sweet-spiciness of the nog and extra nutmeg can make a whole apartment building reek of holiday spirit. We later tried to recapture this aroma by adding nutmeg to our humidifier, but all that accomplished was the ruining of a perfectly good (and expensive) filter.
Hot nog: Hot chocolate is a holiday staple for most people. It doesn’t hurt to mention that nog is also delicious in your coffee and tea—Earl Grey, orange pekoe, and chai are all amazing. It’s like hot chocolate, but less boring and noggier, in a way.
Cookies: There are a million deserts which harness the holiday power of eggnog, but our personal favorite is the simple, reliable of eggnog chocolate-chip cookies.
Now that you’re equipped with a handful of awesome ways to ingest your eggnog, here are a few things not to do:
Chicken Noggets: Basically, the idea was to replace the egg in the chicken batter mix with eggnog, then bake or fry the chicken as you normally would. We knew this was a gambit, but didn’t realize how bad it actually would be. If you ever need to simulate the taste of fermented chicken-milk and the texture of a breaded gym sock, then this recipe is for you.
Bacon & Eggnog: Similar to the batter idea of the Noggets, we wanted see what it would be like to do candied bacon, but with nog. If successful, one could make a killer club sandwich with this bacon. What you end up with, though, closer resembles an omelette stuffed with bacon and a bag of sugar.
(Note: We at The A.V. Club do not endorse soynog or any other non-nog masquerading as a nog. It’s watery, light, and significantly healthier for you. It totally defeats the purpose of nog. That being said, all of these ideas work just as well, or poorly, if you use soynog instead of eggnog. Just, you know, less delicious.)
