Egg Dishes in Asia

Eggs could be cooked and eager in many interesting ways in Asia. Perhaps you have tried all of them?

Half Boiled Egg

Room temperature eggs are put into boiling warm water and left in order to smoke for 4 minutes. The end result? You get a soft and wet egg yolk and white, slippery enough to become slurped down in a single breath! Usually served with some drops of dark soy sauce along with a dash of white pepper. A well known breakfast item in Singapore, eaten with bread toasted.

Tea Leaf Egg ('cha ye dan' in Mandarin)

This is really a savory snack, extremely popular in Taiwan. Tea leaf eggs are difficult boiled eggs which are further stewed inside a salted tea liquid, with soy sauce and five-spice powder. The eggs are first cooked to become hard-boiled, then the shells are lightly cracked without peeling and boiled the 2nd time to allow the flavor from the tea to the egg, producing a marbled pattern about the egg white whenever you remove the shell.

Salted Duck Egg ('xian dan' in Mandarin)

This is really a Chinese preserved food. It's made by soaking whole raw ducks eggs in brine or covered with heavily salted clay for around a month. This leads to a very liquid egg white along with a bright orange-red, round and firm yolk. Typically eaten with congee, as well as used being an ingredient in moon cakes and rice dumplings.

Century Egg / Preserved Egg ('pi dan' in Mandarin)

Legend has it that century eggs are created by soaking duck eggs in horse urine! In fact the eggs are preserved inside a mixture of clay, ash, salt, lime and rice straw for many weeks to months. When cooked, the egg white includes a gelatinous texture, looks brownish and transparent, as the egg yolk is creamy and appears grayish-green. Century eggs possess a pungent smell and it is typically eaten with preserved ginger.

Egg Soup

Egg soup is sort of a form of art. Beaten eggs could be added to any Chinese soup (flavored with pork, chicken, crab, shrimp, as well as just vegetables). The secret is to gently pour the beaten eggs to the soup and employ a fork to stir the one way until the eggs form thin streams or ribbons.

Egg Tart ('dan ta' in Mandarin)

A type of pastry popular in Asia, particularly in Hong Kong, egg tarts contain a flaky outer crust, by having an egg custard filling. The western equivalent is really a custard tart. You'll find egg tarts in many Hong Kong and Chinese bakeries and dim sum restaurants.

Preserved Radish ('chai po' in Hokkien) Omelet

Preserved radish is served like a topping for steamed rice cake 'chwee kueh', a well known breakfast item in Singapore. Preserved radish may also be mixed right into a beaten egg to create preserved radish omelet, a salty side dish.

Minced Pork Omelet

To get this to, just add minced pork, parsley, fresh chili and salt to beaten eggs and pour the mix on to a heated pan. Remove in the pan once the egg and meat is cooked.

Oyster Omelet

Small oysters and green onion are mixed into an egg batter. Corn starch can be used in the batter to provide the egg a thicker consistency. The mix is pan-fried and served with chili sauce dip.

Author Bio

Yi Sim is really a foodie who loves to experiment with new Asian recipes.

She writes a food blog at simcooks.com