Tea Eggs | Recipe

The most eggcellent

tea eggs

Tea eggs will forever remind me of childhood. When I was younger, I had to go to Chinese school every Saturday— so no weekend sleepovers, no Girl Scouts; it was Chinese language lessons, followed by culture classes and Chinese dance.

For lunch, you could pay for items, but if you answered questions correctly in class, you got coupons which you could use towards lunch items. So there was a large incentive to answer more questions correctly in class because you could get more coupons and therefore more tea eggs during lunch time. 

Thankfully now, I don’t have to answer questions to be able to eat tea eggs, but it still does feel like a reward to eat them! I love using my husband’s family tea egg recipe, but making the eggs jammy or a little runny to eat over rice with furikake. it’s very handy to have tea eggs ready as a quick snack during the week or to sneak into a movie theater to eat instead of overpriced popcorn. 🤣

You can watch the visual process to make the recipe here.

What’s in it

• 6 brown eggs

• 1 cup dark soy sauce

• 5 cups water

• 1 tsp salt

• 1/2 tbsp dememara cane sugar or regular cane sugar

• 1 chinese cinnamon stick

• 2-3 star anise

• 2 black tea bags

• 1 oolong tea bag

How to do it

my jam.

1. Boil a pot of water until it’s a rolling boil.

2. For hard-boiled eggs: add in your eggs and boil for 10 minutes if you want hard boiled eggs. Turn off the heat + let the eggs cool, gently crack the egg shell with the back of a spoon.

3. For medium or jammy eggs: boil the eggs for 6 minutes and then put them in a bowl with ice cubes— an ice bath for your eggs for 3 minutes. Gently crack the egg shell with the back of a spoon.

4. In a pot, add 5 cups of water, dark soy, star anise, cinnamon, tea bags, sugar + salt and get it to a gently rolling boil. Boil the mixture for about 10 minutes for the mixture to evenly blend together.

5. Add in your eggs to the tea soy sauce mixture.

6. For hard-boiled eggs: boil eggs for 10 minutes, then turn the heat off for 20 minutes, then boil for an additional 10 minutes. This helps the egg exterior to be smoother. Let the eggs marinate in the fridge overnight or you can marinate longer for the eggs to be more flavorful + saltier.

7. For medium/jammy eggs: simmer the eggs in the tea soy mixture for 1 minute on low heat. cool for 20 minutes, then store in the fridge overnight or you can marinate longer for the eggs to be more flavorful + saltier. Note, the tea egg crack lines will be more faint on the jammy eggs since they are not cooked as long in the soy mixture.

8. You can simmer the sauce to heat the eggs up until they’re warm, or you can eat them room temperature or cold. They’re delicious at any temp.

9. Eat alone or over rice with furikake!