Hoot, Happy Easter and April 1st 2018!
It is a perfect time to find what makes the perfect tea egg!
My favorite Tea Egg recipe is from Culinary Tea which makes a picture perfect Tea Egg. Tea Eggs are made with hard boiled eggs cracked and boiled/marinated in soy sauce, sugar, various spices, and tea.
The tea in the Tea Egg doesn’t vary too much as generally black tea is used. Lapsang Souchong is generally the best, though cheffy, Tea Egg tea. I have substituted in some shou puer with some decent results too. However, often the tea gets slightly lost in all those other ingredients, especially the soy sauce. I am curious if I can increase the tea flavor in Tea Egg by only using tea, as well as if other teas would taste better.
WILL IT TEA EGG?
Procedure: Cracked hard boiled egg + 5 grams of tea + topped with hot water in a mason jar. Held at boil for 30 minutes and steeped overnight in the fridge.
Generally, you boil tea eggs on the stove in the tea mixture. I am not dirtying 6 pots or standing around the stove all day. I cheated and stuffed eggs in mason jars and used my steam oven set at 212F. Likely I could have used a water bath canner.
Forever Spring Nantou Taiwanese Oolong
I wanted to try a greener, floral oolong in a Tea Egg. I like oolong and am the Oolong Owl, so there should be an oolong egg. The closest oolong on hand is my Everyday Teas’ Forever Spring. The tea sucked up most of the liquid, so it ended up mostly egg surrounded by leaf.
Only a slight colour change that is hard to capture on camera. It does look like a Tea Egg if you squint at it.
This egg smells deliciously like a floral oolong. The flavor tastes like a regularly boiled egg, but the more you chew it, the more floral notes come out. It isn’t bitter or stewy that should have happened to this oolong being steeped this long. It is better than I thought and I ate the entire egg.
Will it Tea Egg?
Sure does and would make a nice flowery egg salad. There was no mistake I was eating a literal tea egg.
1995 HK Storage Jincha Puer
A bit of shou puer in tea eggs is a nice treat adding extra earth. Why not go all out on the shou? This is one of the dankest puer I own. It smells and tastes like a swampy basement that has been flooded too many times, but with an earthy wet sweetness underneath. It even has a slight white coating that encourages extra rinses.
Unpeeling the egg, the shell was impressively stained but the actual Tea Egg underneath just has a hint of colour. I have to mention, this tea egg smells bad. It sports that dank reeky dollar store paper smell.
Flavor-wise, it tastes like the worst of the ultra dank 1995 jincha. It is swampy, dollar store reeky paper, with a side of musty mold library books… but concentrated in egg form. I don’t know why, but as a tea this is fine, eating it in as an egg, not so fine. It is like I dropped the egg on the floor of a basement, forgot about it, it started to rot a bit, but hasn’t shriveled up due to amazing storage.
Will it Tea Egg?
No, unless you are a hardcore dankest of dank pu heads.
Hibiscus
My guilty pleasure is hibiscus tea iced. Why not in Tea Eggs? I bet the red colour will look awesome!
What the everliving hoot happened…
The hibiscus tea in the jar turned black, and the egg shell is also black and feels really gritty. My guess is the acidic tea was trying to melt the shell.
Finished product still looks cool with a black spiderweb on the egg, as if a Halloween egg than Easter egg.
The flavor is strange. I wouldn’t guess it is hibiscus as there is no floral or pucker. There is 0 tart. It tastes strange, like a mix of chewing aspirin, chalk, and burnt. I immediately regretted why I decided to find a good Tea Egg as there is something very wrong with this egg.
Will it Tea Egg?
This was a grave mistake.
Bella Luna Blue Tea
Blue tea is all the rage right now and I love how beautiful of a blue you get from this tea. I am using Adagio Teas’ Bella Luna Blue, which is a butterfly pea flower, lemongrass, and blueberry flavored tea. I figure the lemongrass would be a great compliment. In my review the other day, I only noticed the blueberry notes when there was sugar added, so this should be safe.
How cool! This looks unreal! Pinterest fake even.
The colour even penetrated through the egg.
The Tea Egg strongly smells like blueberry. Flavor-wise, it tastes like candy blueberry. It seems the added flavoring in the tea went concentrated into the egg. It is a little lemon grassy, but the main flavor is strong sweet blueberry. Then I am back on earth realizing I am eating an egg and not a blueberry, especially once you hit the yolk. This is an incredibly strange experience and I don’t know how I feel about this. It tastes good but wrong, like eating a steak that tastes like grape instead of beef.
Will it Tea Egg?
For dessert, yes.
Russian Tea
I purchased this Russian Tea blend while in Alaska. This tea is the strongest orange spice tea I have tried so far. Also while in Alaska, I purchased some local cookbooks which all had an interesting “Russian tea recipe” which is a combination of tea and Tang.
I didn’t use all the ingredients as my tea is spicy enough, I just used the tea and a scoop of Tang. I didn’t add any extra sugar as that would be too sweet.
This tea egg looks impressive, but also feels strangely hard, a bit shriveled, and domed at the cracks like a turtle shell.
First few chews and everything was fine. The egg tasted a little fake citrus and sweet… but it quickly made a turn for the worst tasting like bitter rot, chemicals, and rotten orange. Not to mention the texture was closer to rubber than an egg. A barf bucket was needed. This egg again shows added flavoring (double duty here due to orange spice and whatever the hoot is in Tang) and chemicals does bad things to eggs.
Will it Tea Egg?
I hope the egg doesn’t kill me.
(affiliate links. I hope I don’t have some medical bills from this)
