Marbled Tea Eggs
Until recently, the tea egg remained elusive to me. I wanted a beautiful, dark-veined surface on a perfectly-cooked hardboiled egg; no chalky yolks! Many eggs were boiled in the making of this recipe.
I wish I can recall exactly where I first had a tea egg; that part of my memory has been wiped clean. Its distinct look and flavour, however, clearly made such an impression on me. If you haven’t had this popular Taiwanese snack before, it is very similar to a Japanese ramen egg, but unlike its Japanese counterpart, Taiwanese-style tea eggs are boiled twice—once, to a hard-boil stage, and then again once the shell has been partially-cracked. The partially-cracked egg is left to stew over a low and gentle simmer in a flavoured tea and soy bath anywhere between 20 to 40 minutes, and sometimes even several hours. The dark colour from the tea-soy concoction then seeps through to the egg whites via the cracked parts of the shell; this causes the marble-like veining on the eggs when you peel the shells off. The Japanese ramen egg is only boiled once—usually to a jammy-yolk-stage—then the eggs are cooled, peeled, and left to marinate in a sweetened soy sauce concoction overnight.
I grew up eating chalky yolks; I did not mind the outer grey tinge from a yolk that has been taken past its “ideal” hard-boil stage. Whenever my parents made us rice porridge dishes like lugaw (Philippine congee) or arroz caldo (a Philippine ginger and chicken-infused rice porridge), the hard-boiled eggs that accompany these dishes often sat in the hot porridge, thereby infusing the hard-boiled eggs with the porridge’s flavour and further cooking those yolks. I don’t recall appreciating a soft-boiled egg or a yolk with a jammy centre until I was well into my late teens. I am also very ashamed to admit that learning how to boil eggs came much, much later in my life; I was far more comfortable poaching an egg, if you can believe that. What frustrated me most about boiling an egg is the peeling of those shells; they never came off clean. Moreover, I never knew how much time it took for a yolk to set to my ideal; my yolks were either too soft or much too hard for my preference.
Therein lies the quandary behind the Taiwanese-style tea egg. If you are not a fan of chalky yolks, chances are… you may not like the snack the way it is traditionally-made. Do recall that the egg gets boiled in the flavoured tea and soy bath for a second time… and for a long time! Think about what that does to a yolk! Don’t get me wrong—I will eat a traditionally-made tea egg if I ever found myself with a hankering for it in Taiwan, because, chalky yolk aside… it’s still friggin’ delicious—all eggy and full of umami. Admittedly, however, my personal tastes have changed. When I had proper Japanese ramen for the first time ever in 2010—the year I moved to Vancouver—it was then that I had my first jammy-yolked, ramen egg experience. I was a convert. And as I grew into my twenties, I found I no longer liked the texture of the chalky yolk I once loved from childhood. And because I was essentially useless when it came to boiling an egg, I would never boil eggs; rather, I would poach or scramble them instead.
I have been thinking about the tea egg for the past five years. I don’t know why I suddenly became so fixated with it… I think I started to make my own ramen eggs one evening back in 2017… but that quickly evolved to my wanting to level up and attempt the beautiful marbling behind the Taiwanese tea egg. But how do I achieve this without essentially overcooking the yolks?