A century egg

Cookbook | Ingredients | Recipes

| Cuisines | Cuisine of China

The century egg (a.k.a. preserved egg, thousand-year egg, thousand-year-old egg; Chinese: 皮蛋; pinyin: pídàn or Chinese: 松花蛋; pinyin: sōnghūadàn) is a Chinese delicacy made by preserving duck (or less commonly chicken) eggs in a mixture of charcoal and lime for (despite the name) around 100 days. It is greenish in color, has a creamy cheese-like flavor and a strong aroma.

Ingredients

• 4 Century eggs
• 80g Jinhua ham
• 80g pickled stem ginger
• 320g butter
• 1 tablespoon oil

Procedure

1. Wash preserved egg clean.
2. Shell the eggs. Cut into 4 parts. Cut the pickled stem ginger into thin slices.
3. Cut the Jinhua ham into thin slices. Soak in water for a while.
4. Sandwich a sliced ginger with a sliced ham and a sliced preserved egg.
5. Leave the preserved egg sandwiches in a dish for later use.
6. Mix the water, oil, salt, butter well to make pasta. Pour the pasta over the preserved egg sandwiches.
7. Heat the wok. Pour in dash of oil. Bring the oil to medium heat. Dump in the preserved egg sandwiches.
8. Fry until preserved egg sandwiches float on the surface.