Roxanne Kent

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Employee Profiles
and Recipes

CULINARY RESEARCH ASSISTANT

“I’m especially proud of the wild blueberry sauce I created for Prairie Research Kitchen. This was an opportunity to hone my product development skills and an exciting challenge because I wanted to use sweetgrass. With the help of my research coordinator, I created a sweetgrass-infused vinegar to enhance the flavour of the sauce.”

Roxanne Kent

Roxanne Kent joined Prairie Research Kitchen in 2021, and now puts her culinary skills to work supporting product development projects.

She has won various awards, including one for a recipe she developed for Manitoba Pork Producers. Since coming to PRK, she worked on several product development projects highlighting Indigenous and local ingredients.

Community connection is especially important to Roxanne: in addition to graduating from RRC Polytech’s Culinary Arts program in 2021 with honours, she earned a social work degree in 2015. One of her long-term goals is to work with low-income families to teach them how to cook nutritious meals.

Roxanne also takes the lead on redirecting excess food from PRK projects by donating them to community organizations such as the Main Street Project, a local community organization serving Winnipeg’s most vulnerable residents. She was first introduced to PRK’s focus on sustainability and community support while working on a project for Winnipeg Harvest (now Harvest Manitoba, a province-wide food bank network), where she dehydrated excess veggies for a shelf-stable packaged soup.

Her recipe for Scotch eggs incorporates beans as an alternative protein. The challenge, she says, was to give the beans a sausage flavour that tastes just like the real deal.

FUN FACT: When Roxanne first started culinary school, she had no kitchen experience, let alone research kitchen experience. RRC Polytech’s Culinary Arts program allowed her to explore both and gave her the confidence to follow her goals.

Sausage-Free Scotch Eggs

Source: Pulse Canada Food Service Project

YIELD: 12 EGGS

600 g	pinto beans, cooked
2 g	mustard powder
20 g	brown sugar
2 g	paprika, smoked
1 g	sage, ground
.5 g	thyme, ground
6 g	fennel seed
8 g	kosher salt
2 g	ground pepper
2	eggs, whisked

Herb butter

20 g	butter, unsalted
15 g	onions, minced
10 g	garlic, minced
50 g	butter, unsalted
10 g	parsley
12	eggs, soft boiled
200 g	all-purpose flour
200 g	panko crumbs
350 g	egg wash

Mash the pinto beans with a fork.
Mix the spices and add them to the pinto bean mix.
Stir in the herb butter and let the mixture cool completely.
Add in the whisked egg and mix well.
Chill the mixture.

Herb Butter

In a medium saucepan on medium heat, add a small amount of butter and sauté the onion and garlic until the onions are soft.
Add in the remaining butter and melt.
Add in the parsley and take the herb butter off the heat to cool.
Once cool, add the herb butter to the bean mixture.

Soft Boiled Eggs

Place 12 eggs in a large pot of water.
Bring the water to a boil, then simmer for 5 minutes.
Turn the heat off and place the eggs in an ice water bath for 2 minutes.
Carefully peel the eggs and dry them off. Set them aside until you are ready to wrap the eggs in the bean mixture.

Wrapping the Eggs

Preheat the oil for deep frying to 165°C/325°F.
Prepare you egg dredging station. Put the flour, panko crumbs and egg wash in separate bowls.
Weigh out 50 g of the chilled bean mixture.
Put a portion of the mixture onto the palm of your hand. Place the egg on top. Carefully add the remaining mixture and wrap it around the egg, filling any gaps in the coating. The egg should be completely covered in bean mixture with no part of the egg showing.
Repeat this step with the remaining soft boiled eggs.
When completed, put the bean-covered eggs in the flour, then in the egg wash, then in the panko crumbs. Put the egg in the egg wash again, then in the panko crumbs again, for a double dredge. Repeat with remaining eggs.
Deep fry the eggs for 2 1/2 minutes or until the eggs are golden brown.

Did You Know? A traditional Scotch egg is traditionally wrapped in sausage meat instead of our bean mixture. A common picnic food, in the United Kingdom Scotch eggs are even packaged and sold in grocery stores, corner stores, and quick marts. In North America, you’ll most often find them in British-styled pubs.

Scholars debate the origins of the Scotch egg, and many people have claimed to be its inventor. Some say they’re called “Scotch” eggs because they were originally “scorched” over an open flame, although records suggest otherwise. Others claim the name comes from the “Scotching” culinary process, although the process itself is open to interpretation. Still others point to the 19th century Scottish practice of dipping eggs in lime powder to prepare them for trade.

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