shutterbugISm

I guess it was one of those nights when we wanted to try our hands on making some of our favorite food and we decided to go cruise the supermarket for something simple to make.

From a simple shabu-shabu beef asparagus wrap idea, we headed down to the eggs section when suddenly, we hit upon an inspiration of making the ni-tamago which we both love. Ni-Tamago is basically a sauce-seasoned boiled egg that has nice firm whites with a runny center which accompanies your bowl of ramen in most authentic Japanese ramen restaurants.

In fact, I also remembered Vinc, C, Jean and I had an 'indepth' discussion on how to make it on the day of their pre-wedding shoot.. heheheh....

So we bought like 14 eggs (10 medium + 4 large) to go home and experiment. Thankfully, the recipes and techniques are no lacking on the internet but I remembered ChubbyHubby's version and went on to experiment with his technique while I also did another version of my own to see if there's a difference.

Our 1st 3 attempts were failures coz we tried different volumes of water, different cooking timings as well as overcooking... and using chubby hubby's method, we also managed to end up with Onsen Tamago after 18-20 minutes.

The trick is the timing and the method which you cook the eggs. CH used a slow-cook method which yields an even texture throughout the whites of the egg while my method is flash-boil cooking which yields a slightly firmer exterior (which is great for removing the shell later on).

Basically the methods are pretty similiar but here's my flash-boil variation:

• a) Bring to boil about 4-5 cups of water (enough to cover the eggs)
• b) When the water's bubbling away, lower the eggs into the water gently to prevent cracking them on impact
• c) Cook for 5 - 6 mins (medium eggs), 7 - 7.5 mins (larger eggs) on high heat
  
• d) Prep an ice bath (volume enough to cover the eggs totally)
• e) Once the cooking time is up, just scoop the eggs up and dump them gently into the icebath to stop the cooking process
• f) Ice the eggs for about 3 - 4 hours while you prep the seasoning sauce.
• g) Gently peel off the shell of the eggs before steeping them into the sauce and leave them in the fridge for at least 4 - 6 hours. I left them for 24 hours actually) - the longer you steep them, the better the taste :D
• h) When ready to eat, leave the eggs to room temperature (you can also heat it slightly in the microwave but dun cut the egg open 1st and then add to your rice/ noodles/ etc
  

Sauce:

• a) Combine Japanese Dashi sauce (in accordance to how many eggs you have) with 4 tbs of Teriyaki sauce, 1-2 ts of Mirin, 2-3 tbs of sugar, water to dilute the mixture a bit and 8-10 slices of old ginger. (I actually used Tempura sauce coz I can't find Dashi)
• b) Bring the whole mixture to boil and set aside to cool
• c) Transfer the sauce to a deep bowl to immerse the eggs for the next 4- 6 hours or more

Try it out and let me know if it works for you!

Labels: Clover, Ranting, Recipes, RICOH GrD, Thoughts

Posted by ShutterBug on Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 20:56 | Permalink