Homemade Eggnog

Oh, eggnog — you devilish seasonal treat, you. We love you in our morning lattes and we love you spiked with bourbon before going to bed. You make the most delicious French toast ever, and even our favorite cake is sending you love notes. Is there anything you can’t do? Truly?

This holiday season, I say let’s skip the store-bought cartons and additive-laden jugs, and have our eggnog the old-fashioned way: with real eggs. This stuff is incredible, and it couldn’t be easier to make. As long as you have eggs, sugar, milk, and cream in your fridge, you can have eggnog anytime the craving hits. Here’s a step-by-step recipe to guide you to eggnog bliss.

• Eggs: You’ll need 6 large eggs.
• Granulated sugar: Regular sugar sweetens the eggnog.
• Whole milk: Whole milk provides the creaminess.
• Heavy cream: Cream provides an extra dose of richness.
• Liquor (optional): You can spike the eggnog with rum, bourbon, or Cognac, but it’s purely optional, or you can just let people spike individual glasses when serving instead offer more than one choice.

It’s called eggnog because, classically, it contains eggs. And, classically, those eggs are raw. Classically, eggnog is also aged with liquor for several weeks (or months!), which sounds insane until you realize that the booze acts as both preservative and sterilizer. Very few bacteria, including salmonella, can survive in the presence of alcohol, as has been proven in lab experiments at Rockefeller University.

Think of it this way: Aged eggnog is another way of preserving seasonal bounty. Eggs and milk gathered at the height of their season — summertime — are preserved with alcohol until a time when they were historically scarce — wintertime. The fact that the resulting preserved beverage makes an addictively good boozy cocktail for holiday celebrations is a win for frugal homesteaders everywhere.

But even if you’re not aging your eggnog like a Victorian, the same Rockefeller lab determined that the risk of food-borne illness is still quite small. I recommend using the freshest organic eggs you can find. You can also use pasteurized yolks and whites, or cook the eggnog base on the stovetop (see instructions at the end of the recipe below), if you need to be careful of using raw eggs.

Homemade eggnog is thickened first with egg yolks and then given even more texture by folding in whipped egg whites at the end. Those egg whites transform what can be a fairly heavy, overly rich drink into something airier and frothier — though no less decadent. If you want to make it thicker or creamier, play with the proportion of whole milk and heavy cream, adding more cream for some extra body and richness.

Aging your eggnog for even a short time does wonders for its taste and texture. The distinct flavors of egg, cream, and liquor meld together even after just a day or two in the fridge, making a smoother, more balanced cup of nog. The proteins in the eggs also start to thicken, giving eggnog its signature spoon-coating thickness.

If you’d like to try aging your booze for longer than a few days, I recommend using a ratio of two parts dairy to one part liquor — half the amount of liquor as milk and cream in the recipe. If this is a little too boozy for your taste, you can thin it out with some extra cream when you serve.

As for shelf-life, if your household is anything like mine, leftover eggnog is rarely an issue. Depending on the amount of liquor you add, the eggnog base without the egg whites will also keep quite well for several days:

• Non-alcoholic eggnog: Consume within 1 day.
• Eggnog with 1/2 to 1 cup liquor: Refrigerate for several days.
• Eggnog with 1 1/2 cups liquor: Refrigerate for several weeks in a sealed glass container or mason jar, where it will continue aging and thicken up quite nicely.