Chinese food culture has an ever-growing presence, making its way to nearly every corner of the world. There are hundreds of recipes for every diet preference, palate, and meal — it’s no wonder we can’t get enough!
While meat, vegetables, and rice are often thought of as the stars of fan-favorite Chinese dishes, eggs are another ingredient that is essential to making classic recipes shine. Though eggs can completely transform a dish with their flavor, they also provide essential nutrients. Depending on how they’re cooked, eggs can add texture and flavor and act as the main protein of a meal or a complimentary accompaniment.
If you’re craving tasty homemade Chinese food, put your cooking chops to the test with a few delicious and easy Chinese egg recipes!
Chinese food is inarguably popular and tasty. However, eating out whenever you’re in the mood isn’t necessarily good for your health and can be expensive. Learning how to make authentic Chinese dishes gives you a renewed appreciation for the culture while simultaneously allowing you to grow your culinary skillset.
If you’re used to having your food within an hour of ordering it, it’s easy to forget that the techniques chefs use are the result of years of practice. In fact, the methods used to prepare your favorite Chinese entrees have been used for thousands of years. These methods are what give Chinese food its distinctive style and profile.
These tips will help you create fresh, balanced, and flavorful Chinese dishes.
Use a variety of meat and vegetables so your dish is diverse in color, flavors, and textures. When cooking Chinese food, you should opt for fresh ingredients whenever you can. If you have an authentic Chinese supermarket near you, it’s usually worthwhile to buy certain ingredients from there.
Additionally, you should wash and cut your vegetables before you start cooking to ensure they’re clean and ready to go. It’s also important to keep your vegetables separate from each other, as not all vegetables cook the same way.
When preparing your meat, you should always marinate it for at least a few hours before cooking it. This time allows the seasoning to truly soak into the meat for mouthwatering flavor.
Though you may have cooked different types of meat plenty of times, you may want to refresh your memory when it comes to a few kitchen fundamentals.
Because vegetables come in all shapes and sizes, it only makes sense to stagger their cooking times. One of the biggest blunders home cooks make is adding all of the vegetables to the pan at once, which doesn’t allow the thickest veggies to cook all the way through.
Many Chinese recipes use bok choy, broccoli and cabbage, which require longer cooking times than other common ingredients like snow peas or onions. If you find yourself second-guessing the order to use when cooking several different vegetables, you can always fry them separately. This way, you’re guaranteed to have an evenly cooked stir-fry.
While many people often associate Chinese food with dinner time, you can find recipes that are perfect for any meal. From savory soups to creamy custards, you’ll never be lost on what to make for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or dessert!
These noodles are a staple in Chinese food culture. In fact, the oldest recipe for this simple, yet delicious starch dates back centuries. Made with eggs and wheat or rice flour, egg noodles are easy to make from scratch — but here, you can use store-bought noodles if you’d prefer.
This recipe calls for an all-star lineup of savory ingredients, including chow mein egg noodles, oil, garlic, chicken, shrimp, cabbage, carrots, and scallions. For the sauce, you’ll need light and dark soy sauce, oyster sauce, sugar, and water.
This recipe is a great go-to for a quick homemade and affordable meal. And it can be easily altered to fit your tastes! If you love vegetables, try adding spinach, mushrooms, and peppers for additional flavor. Feel free to add scrambled eggs or replace the chicken with beef. With plenty of protein and your choice of vegetables, chow mein requires no sides or appetizers.
No meal satisfies quite like homemade fried rice. It’s a comfort food that fills you up while still providing essential vitamins and nutrients. In particular, egg fried rice is guaranteed to take your fried rice game to the next level. The secret to making truly amazing fried rice is using day-old rice. Preparing the rice the day before ensures the grains dry out and firm up, which will make your rice less mushy in the frying pan.
This dish is a good option for picky eaters, as it’s so easy to substitute the ingredients for whatever vegetables or meat you like. This recipe calls for oil, garlic cloves, an onion, vegetables, rice, eggs, and green onion. There’s also a sauce, made with rice wine, oyster sauce, dark soy sauce, sesame oil, and white pepper.
Another little-known secret to making perfect fried rice is to make the skillet sizzling hot and coat it with enough oil to keep the ingredients from sticking. The increased heat will help your rice achieve that smoky flavor you get at a restaurant. The best part about fried rice is that you can adapt it to work in whatever food you have in your fridge.
Traditional tea eggs are a popular snack across China, Indonesia, and Taiwan. Although they take a bit of time to prepare, they can last up to three or four days. This take on the classic recipe will result in beautifully soft tea eggs every time.
Unlike regular hard-boiled eggs, tea eggs require a few more ingredients to unlock unparalleled flavor — Sichuan peppercorns, ginger, bay leaves, light and dark soy sauce, star anise, black tea leaves, sugar, salt, and a cinnamon stick.
There’s no wrong way to eat a tea egg, you can enjoy them warm or cold. If you’re feeling particularly hungry, you can eat them as a side with rice or vegetables.
There’s nothing like cozying up to a steaming bowl of egg drop soup on a cold winter day. While it may seem obvious, the name for egg drop soup comes from how it’s made — you simply drop raw eggs into hot broth to create the signature silken strands of cooked egg.
This recipe takes 20 minutes to make and requires just a few ingredients. Aside from chicken stock and beaten eggs, you’ll need sugar, salt, sesame oil, turmeric, white pepper, scallions, and cornstarch.
This soup is a great starter for lunch and dinner but also works as a warming and welcoming way to start your day on chilly mornings. If you want to punch up the flavor, try adding some hot sauce to your soup. When topped with crispy noodles or served as a side, egg drop soup becomes a tasty and filling meal.
This is a colorful medley of vegetables, eggs, and meat. As a savory omelet-like dish, you can add whatever combination of ingredients you like. The most common additions are bean sprouts, water chestnuts, cabbage, onions, and bamboo shoots. If you want more protein, you can’t go wrong with pork, chicken, shrimp, or beef.
For this entree, you’ll need eggs, black pepper, salt, rice wine, oil, bean sprouts, onion, mushrooms, Chinese sausages, and cabbage. To cook the sauce, you’ll use chicken broth, sesame oil, rice wine, cornstarch, soy sauce, and water.
There are many iterations of egg foo yung worldwide. It’s common in British and American Chinese cuisine, as well as variations featured in Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand. The secret to making a perfect puffed-up egg foo yung is to use plenty of oil in the pan, so the eggs inflate similarly to a souffle. The outside will become crisp while staying soft and creamy inside.
For a delicious meal, look no further than Chinese steamed eggs. This is a savory take on a classic egg custard, making it a great, healthy breakfast or snack.
It’s incredibly easy to make, as all you need are three ingredients for the eggs — eggs, water, and salt. To make the topping, you need chives, sesame oil, soy sauce, and hot chili oil.
Feel free to serve this dish with any side you like or enjoy it by itself for a simple meal or snack.
Though eggs are a breakfast staple, you can make scrambled eggs any time of day. In this particular case, what sets Chinese scrambled eggs apart comes down to the use of Chinese white wine, or Shaoxing wine, sesame oil, and miso paste. If you want a delicious garlic flavor, you may want to add Chinese garlic chives, or “jiu cai,” to the dish. While regular chives are round, hollow, and have a similar taste to onions, garlic chives are flat and taste of garlic.
This recipe calls for eggs, salt, sugar, Shaoxing wine, sesame oil, white pepper, miso paste, cornstarch, butter, and water.
While scrambled eggs are often eaten alone, you can serve this recipe with a side of rice or meat.
If you’re looking to add more protein to your diet, eggs are a great addition to any meal — especially stir-fries! These ingredients add flavor and texture while also acting as a binder for other ingredients. Even though you won’t see this recipe advertised at your local restaurant, it’s a fan-favorite Chinese homestyle dish. With just a few basic ingredients, you get a tangy and complex meal that is perfect for lunch or dinner.
No matter how you cook them, tomatoes and eggs are match made in heaven. But this classic meal takes these simple ingredients and turns them into a high-end dish that is packed full of flavor. If the affordability of this recipe wasn’t enough to instantly make it one of your favorites, its cooking time will send it over the top. In just 20 minutes, you’ll have a full meal that’s ready to eat.
For this recipe, you will need eggs, salt, sesame oil, Shaoxing wine, cornstarch, sugar, ketchup, diced tomatoes, vegetable oil, scallions, and ginger. If you want to serve the eggs with rice, you can steam white rice while you make them.
What makes this scrambled egg stir-fry unlike any other is that you get an amazing sweet tomato and sesame oil-based sauce in the end. Serve it up with plenty of rice on the side and enjoy!
Last — but not least — comes a recipe that combines the best of three noteworthy food cultures — Chinese, British, and Portuguese. Worldwide, you can find these tiny treats in Chinese bakeries and dim sum restaurants. But if you can’t find them locally, these fresh-from-the-oven homemade tarts will have you swooning.
For this recipe, you’ll need white flour, butter, eggs, salt, milk, water, caster sugar, and egg tart molds.
To make the dough:
To make the filling:
To bake:
It’s easy to get carried away with excitement when you’re baking a new dessert. But this recipe demands a little more patience than usual as your dough chills to the right temperature. In the end, you’ll have an irresistible tart of buttery crust filled with silky smooth custard.
The quality of a dish is in the ingredients, and Sauder’s Eggs takes this value to heart. With long-standing family traditions of product excellence and integrity, we’ve become a leading marketer of fresh eggs across the country.
For the freshest and highest quality eggs in the industry, look no further than Sauder’s Eggs to enhance any dish. Whether you’re honing your culinary skills with new recipes or treating the family to beloved favorites, use our store locator to purchase our eggs today.
This post was last modified on October 19, 2022
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