Actually, I can get salted eggs from my local oriental store. At around £3.50 for a pack of six, it’s affordable. So why bother making salted eggs at home? Well, this is an experiment.
It all started five weeks ago.
I wanted to make fried prawns with salted egg yolks. But instead of buying salted eggs from my local oriental store, I wondered whether I’d be able to successfully make my own. So I tried.
There are several ways of making salted eggs: soaking the eggs in brine for several weeks seems to be the easiest. This is also the method I remember my mom using.
Normally, duck eggs are used to make salted eggs, mainly due to the higher fatty content, hence better taste. But a lot of people say chicken eggs work equally well so in this experiment, I used a mixture of both duck and chicken eggs.
What I used:
- 6 duck eggs
- 4 chicken eggs
- 1 ltr water
- 200g salt
- 1 star anise
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 1 slice ginger
How it’s done:
- In a saucepan, bring the water to a boil and dissolve the salt. Add the star anise, cinnamon stick and ginger. Take off the heat and let it cool completely.
- Clean the eggs and dry them with kitchen towel. Make sure that the eggs have no cracks. If there are cracks, use it for an omelette instead :-D.
- Put the eggs in a glass jar or plastic container.
- When the brine has completely cooled, pour the liquid into the jar until all the eggs are covered.
- As eggs have some air in them, they tend to float. To ensure the eggs are submerged at all times, some people use a small bowl or condiment plate and place it on top of the eggs. While this may work, I could not find a bowl or condiment plate that is small enough to fit through the opening of my jar. So instead, I filled a freezer bag with a bit of water, tied it firmly and used that to weigh the eggs down.
- Cover the jar and leave it in a cool and dry place (but not in the fridge). I placed mine in the cabinet under the sink.
- Now all you need to do is wait for a few weeks.
You may want to check the eggs from time to time. It should be noted that on Day 2 of the experiment, I found one of the duck eggs had hairline cracks. I took that particular egg out. As for the rest, after careful inspection, the eggs and the brine seemed OK so I placed the jar back in the cabinet.
To be honest, it was end of Week 4 before I remembered the salted eggs again. I took one chicken egg out, rinse it under tap water and boiled it in a saucepan for 10 mins. The egg wasn’t as salty as I would like so I decided to leave the rest of the eggs in the solution for another week.
At the end of Week 5, I took out one egg, craked it open and found the yolk had turned a dark orange-y colour. The yolk is now firm while the egg whites remain runny. I was happy with the outcome so I took out the rest of the eggs from the jar, rinsed them under tap water and dried them.
Verdict: Chicken eggs are a good substitute for making salted eggs.
I’ll be be making fried prawns with salted egg yolks one of these days. Salted eggs are good with plain white rice or congee too.
Note:
You may want to check whether the salted eggs are ready or not after 15 to 20 days. It is said that it takes longer for eggs to cure in cold condition. Winter’s not over yet in the UK. It took me 5 weeks this time. I have to try again in the summer if only to just prove the statement is true.