Chinese Tea Eggs

The ultimate easy and healthy dish to make! Okai, lemme begin by the history of tea eggssssss...

"Fragrant and flavorful tea eggs are a traditional Chinese treat. The original recipe uses various spices, soy sauce, and black tea leaves in the recipe. A commonly used spice for flavoring tea eggs is Chinese five-spice powder, which contains ground cinnamon, star anise, fennel seeds, cloves and Szechuan peppercorns. Some recipes do not use tea leaves, but they are still called "tea eggs". In the traditional method of preparation, eggs are boiled until they reach a hardened cooked state. The boiled eggs are removed from the water and the entire shell of each egg is gently cracked all around. Smaller cracks produce more marbling when the egg is peeled for eating. The extra water from the boiling should be allow to seep out of the eggs on its own. After about ten minutes, the cracked eggs are ready to be put into the prepared spiced-tea liquid and simmered at medium heat. The simmering allows the spiced fluid to seep into the cracks and marinate the eggs inside their shells. After about 20 minutes, the eggs and the spiced-tea liquid should be transferred to a glass or ceramic container for further steeping in the fridge. For best results, the eggs should be allowed to steep for two days. The dark color of the spiced tea gives the egg a marbled effect when it is peeled to be eaten..."click here if you want to know more

What brings the flavour most out of these eggs is the soy sauce I think. It's one of my childhood dish as I was growing up. And I think if you love green tea cupcakes, loves to try out new herbs, is addicted to chai lattes then there's no harm in trying these eggs out!

As for making them, I used a ready made sachet but there are ingredients available if you want to do it from scratch =). Check out a recipe here. And it's super ultimately easy because all you do is just dump them into a pot and let it simmer.

As well as I learnt something new: The chinese 5-spice flavour or powder. What's amazing is that it encompasses 5 different flavours all in one - sweet, sour, bitter, pungent and salty. And I can't believe that I grew up being expose to this all these while. What's even more amazing is that the ingredients are so healthy and is also used in Chai mixes - peppercorns, star anise, cloves, cinammon and fennel seeds.

Talk about relation in food...they all share the same thing yet give out different flavorsome dishes


Ingredients

• 5 Eggs
• A slow cooker or a pot
• Water
• Tea Egg Sachet

Looking at the ingredients, it does contains all the healthy herbs and spices as well as the chinese 5-spice powder. Nice~

or

• 3 tablespoons soy sauce 
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon black tea leaves or 1 tea bag
• 4 pieces star anise
• 1 small stick cinnamon or cassia bark
• 1 teaspoon cracked peppercorns (optional)
• 2 strips dried mandarin peel (optional)

Boiled eggs and the Sachet mix which unfortunately came in one bag. Was hoping to use smaller portions

Cracking the egg shell and after adding tea egg mix

Method

1. Place eggs in saucepan of cold water – water level should be at 3/4 height of the eggs. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 10 minutes. Leave them to cool abit.
2. With a teaspoon, gently tap all over the eggs. It's just like cracking their shells but not opening them up as yet.
3. In the same pot, add the tea egg sachet / ingredients above and place the eggs back into the pot.
4. Let the pot simmer at low heat for a couple of hours.
5. If you have a slow cooker, let it cook overnight.
6. Drain and serve!