How to make Silky Smooth Chinese Style Steamed Egg – The Recipe!

When many Chinese families have dinner, they actually serve a number of dishes which everyone shares from.  This encourages everyone to sit together at dinner time and help themselves to more as necessary.

This is one of those dishes that you would serve at dinner time along side a fish dish, a meat dish, a vegetable dish.  It’s a steamed egg, and the way that it’s made means it’s very very smooth in texture, like silky tofu.  It’s also very easy to make!

You need:

3 x Eggs (feeds about 4 people sharing)

Some meat or veg (like mince, ham, or shrimp/prawns or shittake mushrooms).  This is not essential and you can just serve egg on its own.

1 cup of water

Spring onion, sesame oil and some plain vegetable oil to garnish.

1. First of all, get your wok.  This is for steaming – you can use another kind of steamer if you wish, but this is the easy way!  Simply fill the wok so it is just less than half full.  Boil the water.

2. You need a round dish to cook it in.  We have a metal bowl for this but you can use anything, like a ceramic bowl that isn’t too deep.

3. Get our meat or veg and scatter it over the bottom of the dish.  This is just some pork mince.

4. Crack your eggs into the dish.  Originally mother used 2 eggs then decided 3 would be better.

4. Whisk it all together and get it really smooth.  Obviously use free range good quality eggs of a medium size.

5. When the egg is well beaten, add 1 cup of water. Note this is my childhood Lion King mug which is a bit smaller than a regular cup. You are looking for 1 cup/mug full.

6. It now looks like this – pale in colour:

7. Once your mixture is ready you need to steam it.  If you don’t have one of these metal contraptions, you need one! They are amazing for steaming, and means you don’t need a special steamer.  They cost a few pounds in Chinese supermarkets.

Put your egg on this, cover the wok with a lid and let it steam for 10 minutes.  Always buy a lid for your wok!

8. After 10 minutes has passed, check on your egg.  It should be medium firm when you put a spoon in it. You’ll know if it’s not ready if when you put a spoon in and it’s still runny.

9. Time to garnish! Take the egg off the steamer, and put your spring onion on it.

10. Next garnish with some heated oil.  Put around 3 tablespoons of oil into the wok and heat it up so it’s really really hot (so it starts smoking).  Do this with vegetable or sunflower oil. Then, quickly and carefully pour this over the egg. It will sizzle!

11. One more thing! Light soy sauce over the top.

12. Add some sesame oil on top, just a few drops for extra flavour.

Here is the finished dish.  It should be silky smooth in texture, be somewhat salty but also have a nuttiness because of the sesame oil.  This isn’t something I’d have on it’s own (unless I had a weird craving!) but I’d have it alongside some greens, and some meat dishes too.

13. A spoon of the steamed egg – see how it’s firm but not too firm?  The small amount of water left at the bottom of the bowl is normal.

Quick, easy, healthy (ish!).

Let me know what you think!

 

 

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