Love the eggs? Let count the ways

Eggs are a small ingredient with huge potential in the kitchen.

For thousands of years, poultry eggs especially have provided humans with protein. Cheap and easy to cook, eggs are usually kept in the fridge as a daily necessity.

Processed egg products such as salted egg yolk are very popular in China and have led food trends that have gained loyal followings.

This week, we’ll take a look at some iconic Chinese egg dishes.

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Eating eggs, the normal and weird ways

There are countless ways to eat eggs in addition to the regular scrambling, frying, poaching and boiling. It’s an easy ingredient to work with and simple steps can make them delicious.

A particularly Chinese egg dish is tea-flavored egg. It’s found on breakfast menus and at food stalls across the country.

The egg is known for its tea and spice infused aroma and flavor as well as the beautiful pattern on the egg white, which is achieved by cracking soft-boiled eggs and simmering them in a seasoned tea stock.

Quail eggs can be used to make smaller tea eggs.

Tiger-skin egg is a classic dish from Suzhou, which is made by deep-frying hard-boiled eggs and then braising them in a soy sauce-based sauce. The outside of the egg becomes wrinkled.

Tomato and egg stir-fry is the first dish many Chinese people learn to cook, which uses scrambled eggs.

Pigeon and goose eggs are also eaten in China and they are considered to be extra nutritious. Pigeon eggs are even used in sweet stews with jujube, longan, brown sugar and more as a tonic.

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Salted duck eggs

In recent years, salted duck egg yolk is a super IP in the food business that attracts attention and boosts sales. Anything with salted yolk in it is hard to resist and has the potential to become wanghong (Internet celebrity).

Take Xing Hua Lou’s special qingtuan (sweet green glutinous rice ball) with salted yolk and meat floss filling and Bonus’s salted egg yolk gelato as the examples.

Salted duck egg is a processed egg product made by marinating fresh eggs in brine. There are different methods to make the egg, like with wine, flour batter or sand, and the brined eggs are boiled or steamed before eating.

An ideal salted duck egg should have a bright red yolk, so rich that the oil can drip down. The egg white portion is much saltier than the yolk, and this delicacy is ideal to enjoy with congee or other staple dishes to add flavor.

The egg yolks can be salted alone as well by burying them in salt for a couple of days. White liquor of high alcoholic content is sprinkled onto the yolks to prevent them from becoming rotten.

Salted duck eggs produced in Gaoyou, Jiangsu Province is considered the best.

The salted egg yolks are widely used in cooking. Recipes like salted yolk chicken wings and salted yolk with pumpkin are very popular.

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The steamed creamy custard bun is a classic Cantonese dim sum dish, and one version of the recipes uses salted yolks to make the filling, adding a special salty flavor.

If you just want the salted egg yolks as a condiment, instead of buying the whole salted eggs and discarding the egg white that’s too salty to eat, take a look at the salted egg yolk sauces.

Yes, the greasy, delicious salted yolks come in jars. The calorie bomb can be topped on rice and noodle, used as a spread on pancakes, or added directly to make dishes that require salted yolks.

These sauces are softer and runnier than crushed yolks alone because of the additional oil. There are also spicy versions of salted yolk sauces.

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Pidan

In October, Sweden’s Disgusting Food Museum opened in Malmo and one Chinese dish made the list of the world’s most disgusting foods.

It’s pidan, which is also known as century egg or hundred-year egg.

Foreigners often disagree with pidan being a delicious food mostly because of the devilish appearance of the egg: black, greenish, sticky and smelling nothing like an egg.

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It takes weeks to transform fresh duck eggs into black colored pidan. The time varies depending on the temperature.

The fresh eggs are preserved in a coating made of salt, quicklime powder, sodium carbonate and plant ash, which is boiled and stirred into a muddy consistency. Then, the eggs are wrapped in this special mud and rolled on rice husk before being sealed in airtight containers and simply waiting for the dark magic to happen.

The quicklime “cooks” the eggs, so pidan is eaten directly without cooking. Traditional recipes call for yellow lead powder to kill bacteria, accelerate protein denaturation and darken the color, but today most of the pidan are lead-free to meet national regulations.

Biandan is the preserved egg made with hens’ eggs and it has a firmer texture and less runny yolk. The color is golden, and the taste is lighter, too.

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Some egg tips

• A trick to check if the egg is good or not is to put it in a glass of water. Floating eggs should go to the trash bin.
  
• When small pieces of eggshell fall into the bowl when you crack an egg, it’s frustrating to remove them with fingers or spoon. The easier way to remove them is with a larger piece of eggshell.
  
• A thin thread or unwaxed dental floss can slice a hard-boiled egg perfectly in half.
  
• The unpleasant green ring on the yolk can be prevented by not overcooking the egg. When the water starts to simmer, turn off the heat and cover the pot.
  
• People on a healthy diet often toss away the yolk because it contains cholesterol and saturated fat. But a moderate, limited intake of egg yolk may not necessarily increase the risk of heart disease. Egg yolk is an excellent source of minerals and vitamins like vitamins A and D, biotin and folate.
  
• Egg yolk lecithin found in egg yolk is effective in helping cats with the troubling hairball problem because it’s a fat emulsifier that can break up the fat binding up the hair. A couple of egg yolks per week, raw or cooked, can be sufficient. Egg yolk lecithin supplement also works but the number of products one can find is limited.