Several months ago I found a recipe for Chinese Tea Eggs here: Appetite for China - Tea Eggs
I thought to myself, that, as unusual as it sounded to my big fat Canadian/American tastes, I bet it would actually taste really good.
So today, I made myself a batch of them for the first time and I can safely say that if you like boiled eggs you will love these. They will make your entire house smell like awesomesauce while they are cooking as well.
So how to they taste? Very, very, very faint sweetness and salty with normal everyday boiled eggs. The flavor is very light (after simmering for two hours) and I almost wish I’d let them cook for three just to see if the flavor deepened. Shawn and I ate ours on a bed of plain rice with a dash of soy sauce and enjoyed the hells out of it. (Read: NOM OUM NOM NOM)
For those of you afraid of clicking links, here’s the recipe if you are curious about trying them yourself:
Chinese Tea Eggs - 茶叶蛋 （cháyèdàn)
- 6 medium to large
- 2 tablespoons or 2 tea bags of black tea or Pu’erh
- 1/2 cup soy sauce
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- 4 pieces star anise
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 1 teaspoon cracked black peppercorn (optional)
- 2 to 3 strips dried mandarin peel (optional)
Put eggs in a medium-sized pot with enough water to cover the eggs. Bring water to boil, then lower heat to simmer for 3 minutes. Remove eggs from heat and allow them to cool a bit before handling (running them under cold water does the trick quickly.) Take the back of a knife and crack eggs evenly all around.
Return eggs to the pot and add the rest of the ingredients. Bring liquid to boil again, then simmer for 1 to 3 hours, longer for a more intense flavor and color, adding water if level gets too low. Remove from heat, and serve as a snack or addition to rice or noodles.
Really really easy recipe and you know, you could make them the night before a picnic or a long trip and have something delicious to snack on later.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Mel food post without actual pictures of my food. Brought to you by: Geek, and Canon.
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July 19th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
I’ve been drooling over this recipe for more than a week and finally decided to try this tonight. I don’t have star anise or mandarin peel, so some improvisation will be required. Will let you know how it turns out. :D
July 19th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Awesome, I’m curious to know what you used instead!
Since the only dark tea in our house had a citrus-ey, floral scent I didn’t (have) add mandarin peel either. Also, we couldn’t get our hands on star anise so we substituted it with anise seeds.
After two hours, Shawn and I agreed they were delicious–boiled eggs with a very light flavor. We also agreed the next time we did it I’d use moar anise and let them boil even longer!