It’s that time of the year when many families do things that have a way of forming lasting memories. When I was little, we lived next door to my grandmother, Mom’s mom. Visiting back and forth was almost daily and we often ended up there for Sunday dinner and such.

Once a year, though, around Christmas time, it was for egg nog.

Yeah, most of us are familiar with “egg nog”, those quart containers in the dairy case between Thanksgiving and Christmas, apparently dispensed by a petrochemical plant somewhere. Oh, okay, that almost makes you know what egg nog is, but I get really leery of something that when you read the ingredients you have to resort to a chemistry textbook to interpret.

So allow me to enlighten:

Cajun Egg Nog

Ingredients:

4 eggs. Separate the yolks from the whites. You’re going to be doing something with each separate component.
1/3 cup sugar, plus 1 tablespoon.
1 pint whole milk
1 cup heavy cream. Or you could just use half and half , which tastes similar to the whole milk we used to get when I was a kid. So skip the milk and whole cream and use three cups of half and half.
1 teaspoon nutmeg. If you are into it, freshly grated is best. And if you like , cinnamon can go in here too, but nutmeg is what we used.

3 ounces bourbon. Or four or five… Or you could use rum.. Or cognac. Or nothing at all. But a little something is very much authentic.

This is enough for four happy people who each get a mug. My grandmother never did a batch that didn’t start with a dozen eggs. Just do the math for a crowd and use a big pot.

Procedure:

This, folks, is a warm egg nog. It’s the kind of thing that will put a glow on your cheeks on a nasty cold December day. If you don’t like warm egg nog, find another recipe. Or make a big batch of this and put it in the fridge. Your call. But honestly, try it hot.

Beat the separated egg whites with the tablespoon of sugar until they form soft peaks. You’re making a sort of soft meringue here. Once that’s done, set it aside.

In a pot on the stove at low to medium heat, pour in the milk, the third of a cup of sugar and the beaten egg yolks. Begin stirring and keep stirring slowly until bubbles start to form near the wall of the pot. You want your mixture’s temperature to rise evenly. As you reach the proper temperature, the mixture will start to thicken. When this happens, stir in the nutmeg. Now you can either turn the heat down to very low or remove from the stove entirely. The mixture should be thick and sipping hot, but not boiling. If you don’t stir, the stuff next to the heat will stick and carbonize, and that’s not going to taste good.

Fold the egg white assemblage into the hot stuff in the pot. If you want, you can save a little of the soft meringue for garnish, but if you don’t overstir when you’re doing the folding, you won’t need to add any meringue as a little will rise to the top of each mug.

This is the point where you can make a decision. Remember that bourbon? You can add it directly to the whole batch in the pot, rendering it an adult beverage, or you can add it to individual mugs for the adults, and allowing the kids to get hot mugs of PG-rated egg nog.

And if you do this one, you’ll never look at one of those cartons in the dairy case the same way again.