Chinese Tea Egg

First, make the tea brine. In a bit pot, add in all the ingredients besides the eggs (8 cups of water, 3 pieces of star anise, 3 pieces of bay leave, 3 cloves of garlic, few pieces of dried hot chilies, 1 stock of cinnamon,1 cup of soy sauce, 10 grams of black tea leaves, 2 tbsp of dark soy sauce,1.5 tsp of five spice, 1/2 tbsp of Sichuan peppercorn, 1 tbsp of salt)

This tea brine is for making the soft boiled tea egg. If you want to make the hard boil tea egg, you need to cut the sodium amount to 2 tsp.

Cover it and turn the heat to high. Once it comes to a boil, turn the heat to low and let it keep cooking for about 15 minutes. You want to simmer it long enough to bring out all the spices aroma.

15 minutes later. The brine should smell really good. Pour some of the brine into a smaller saucepan. The brine should be enough to cover all the eggs. I am making 8 tea eggs. You can cook more if you want. Quickly put it back on the stove. Cover it and boil it for 2 minutes.

While that is cooking, let’s deal with the big batch of brine - I will use it for soaking the eggs. It is very hot. Use some ice cubes to cool it down so you can put the eggs back into the brine without overcooking it. Leave the ice bag in there and let’s check out the eggs.

Take out the eggs and refresh them in the ice bath. If you see some eggs are already cracked by accident, it is not a big deal because we will crack them later anyway. Use the back of the spoon. Lightly tab the shell. You need to crack the surface without actually breaking the egg so the brine can get into it and infuse the egg.

Once you finish all of them, put the eggs back into the pot and keep boiling it for 4 minutes. 4 minutes just my preference, you can cook it longer. It is totally up to you.

By now, the tea brine is nice and cold. Take out the ice bag and put in the egg. Let it sit for at least 4 hours. I usually just leave it overnight so they have enough time to suck in all those seasoning flavors.