Marbelized Smoked Eggs

I think this came from the television chef who went off the air sometime ago in some sort of disgrace having to do with choir boys and alcohol or some such. The memory is somewhat cloudy, but a friend just asked for it so here goes. If it works out correctly you will have a very pretty and smokey egg. The tea makes a cool pattern on the peeled egg.

This process could be done, I suppose, with any flavor you like and most any color, but black smokey tea is how I remember it and the people I have given the recipe to like it. It's very simple despite my run on instructions below. Boil eggs, crack eggs, dye eggs, cool eggs. peel and eat.

1 dozen eggs - more if you want more
Lapsang Suchong Black Tea
Water
Pot

Boil eggs - not quite long enough to completely achieve hard boiled state.
Remove eggs from water and crack shells in coarse pattern by rolling them around on the counter. You do not want to make many, many, many fine cracks as the dye will run together and you will have smokey, black eggs. - which may be alright, but not what we are doing here. You could just strike the eggs several times with the back side of a spoon to create fewer, more defined cracks.
Add several Tablespoons of black Smokey tea to water used to boil eggs and bring to a boil. You are making very strong tea, but you won't drink it so no matter. Of course, you can use tea bags, too. Use six or seven of them. You don't want to be able to see through this water. It should be the color of strong coffee. [Coffee'd eggs might work, too...]
Put cracked eggs back in and bring back to a boil for a minute or two and then remove from heat and let cool overnight in tea water.
Peel the eggs. If the eggs have been cracked in just the right way, the tea will have penetrated the membrane and stained the egg with a distinct pattern. Some of it will peel away with the membrane. In the worst case, the pattern will be fuzzy, but the flavor of the smokey tea will have penetrated.
I serve them just this way. Cutting them for deviled eggs would destroy the pattern and the effect, but if the pattern is unsatisfactory, you could make deviled eggs. I wouldn't do egg salad as the finished salad would be gray and - well, I just wouldn't.

A home cook who appreciates the pros but doesn't want to be one and an eager eater who loves to eat what others make.

Cynthia: All the recipes I've seen (and prepared) for tea eggs use black tea, soy sauce, and star anise. Same idea, otherwise, just different flavor profile. Most Chinese grocery stores sell packets of spices for making tea eggs, so there is no one right way.

As for MZanger's comment on onion skins -- I didn't know this trick was tied to a specific group, but I read about dying eggs (and other things) with onion skins in a book I picked up about thirty years ago, on using foods and spices for making everything from dyes to cordials to face cream. The book suggested the trick (and it only takes a very few shreds of the papery coating on an onion to do this) to make the eggs pretty, but I use it to differentiate visually hard-cooked vs. raw eggs. It simply turns the shells a lovely brown color as you cook them -- and it unlike the tea eggs, it only takes the amount of time you normally cook a hard-cooked egg.

Both the tea eggs and the brown eggs are fun to serve, just to see people's reactions. (The onion skin, however, does not alter the taste of the eggs.)

comment left Mar 22

MZanger: MZanger: William Woys Weaver has a similar recipe for marbled eggs in his _Pennsylvania Dutch Cooking_ (1993). The Pennsylvania Dutch method is to use onion skins, and either tie them on with string or hold them on with aluminum foil. About twenty minutes extra boiling gives you a red marbled color. If you add a dash on vinegar and cook in a cast-iron pot, you get an olive green dye.

Another interesting thing with hard-boiled eggs is to cook them for a really long time, perhaps in a crock pot. They turn dark brown and have a slightly caramelized flavor, like potatoes roasted in the ashes in a fireplace. This is in my American Ethnic Cookbook for Students as a Sephardic Jewish recipe, but it must go back thousands of years and be one of those near-universal recipes like smoked meat.

comment left Mar 20

Pinckney: One could, were one so inclined and compulsive enough, carefully cut the eggs in half and make a filling with the yolks. The halves could then be reunited with the deviled yolk inside and a small bowl of the excess filling placed in the midst of the reassembled eggs. Eaters could then add a little extra deviled egg to their dyed egg if they felt the need for it - and haven't dropped the whole thing in their lap when it squishes apart at the first bite. I don't know, but it may be worth trying. If you do try it, please let me know how it works out.

comment left Mar 19

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