Chinese Tea Eggs

These fragrant and flavorful hardboiled eggs are a traditional Chinese treat. They can be found at the local 7-11 at every corner in Taiwan, and yes, they are safe to eat. The recipe calls for black tea leaves, 5-spice powder (star anise, cinnamon, fennel, cloves and Szechuan peppercorns), and soysauce. Nowadays, though, you can just buy a bag of “tea egg” spices and throw in a pot with a dozen or so eggs. Mm – delicious and easy! If you’ve never had one, I highly recommend you try this recipe.

There are two ways of doing cooking tea eggs. The traditional way is to boil the eggs first, then lightly crack the shells. Small cracks let the spice mixture seep in and create marbling. The spiced fluid marinates the eggs inside the shells and after about 20 minutes, the eggs can be removed with the fluid and refrigerated with the liquid for 2 days.

Another method of making tea eggs is to boil the eggs until they are fully cooked inside, then remove the hard boiled eggs from their shells and let them steep in the spiced tea mixture at low heat for a little longer. The eggs and the mixture are removed from the heat and transferred to a glass or ceramic container for further steeping. This method is faster, but the egg doesn’t look as pretty.

The perfect spiced-tea egg should have a perfect balance between the egg’s natural flavor and the spices. The cracking method is the most recognized feature of this traditional egg recipe. Tea egg is traditionally eaten cold.