Also known as marbled eggs, tea eggs are a popular snack across China and Southeast Asia.
Walk through night markets in China and Southeast Asia, and you’ll smell the unmistakable fragrance of tea eggs. They’re usually sold on the street, scooped up straight from vats of simmering broth.
What are tea eggs?
Also known as marbled eggs, tea eggs are characterized by dark-brown lines that span across the albumen like a cobweb—an effect caused by cracks in the egg shell.
The eggs are often eaten on their own as a quick snack and enjoyed for their savory, soy sauce flavor, with hints of tea. In China, they’re a fixture at convenience stores and street stalls.
Making them is a time-consuming process.
(Read more: Century eggs: What are they made of and where are they from?)
A tea egg is made by cracking a hard-boiled egg and slow-cooking it in a broth made with soy sauce, tea leaves, and various spices, usually star anise, cinnamon, and Sichuan peppercorns.
This process can last anywhere from a few hours to a whole day. The longer the eggs sit in the broth, the more flavor seeps into the cracks and marinates the eggs.
The size of the egg also matters. Tea Chapter, a store in Singapore famous for its tea eggs, advises using medium-sized eggs.
“If the eggs are too small, they’ll get too rubbery after cooking for a long time,” says Gan Chee How, a supervisor at Tea Chapter. “Eggs that are too won’t be able to properly absorb the flavor, so medium-sized eggs are just right.”
What causes their brown color?
The earliest written record of tea eggs dates back to 1792, in a book titled The Way of Eating by the Qing Dynasty scholar Yuan Mei.
In it, he describes a recipe that calls for 10 eggs to be cooked in a solution containing one liang of salt (about 50 grams) and coarse tea leaves.
The suggested duration was the time it takes for two incense sticks to burn—about four hours.
(Read more: Why these noodles are cooked with a lid in the water)
The unique color comes from the broth in which the eggs are cooked. Egg shells contain thousands of pores that allow air and moisture to pass through.
When the eggs sit in the broth, the tea and spices are infused into the egg whites and yolk. Since the soy sauce and tea are acidic, the flavor molecules are able to penetrate further into the egg.
