Classic Tea Eggs Recipe (Cha Ye Dan)

Super easy.  Super delicious.   Classic Tea Eggs.

We love to make a large batch of tea eggs for major Chinese holiday, especially Chinese New Year.   The eggs in a pot signify golden ingots.    We usually make a minimum of 36 or 48 tea eggs per batch, they get better as they soak and marinate.  By day 7, the eggs are really really good, but usually you are just left with one or two by then.

As for tea leaves – this is going to sound horrible, but do not use anything expensive.  Seriously!  Lipton, Tetley will do.   Straight up boring black orange pekoe tea please.     For a pot of 36 eggs, we use at least 8 to 10 tea bags, and then we add another 12g of our own Taiwan Jin Xuan black for flavor and colors.

 

36 eggs

2 star anise* must use !

Salt  (About 1.5 Table spoon)

8 – 12 Lipton / Tetley or whatever cheap tea bags

12g of Taiwan Jin Xuan Black Tea

 

1. Cook eggs to the hard boil stage. Rinse and let cool to make handling easier.
2. Crack the eggs with the back of a spoon. Don’t worry about over cracking.  As long as the shell stays on, it’s all good.   Four to five thump with the back of a spoon per egg should do.
3. Put all cracked eggs back into pot, fill with water to cover. Bring to boil.  Put in tea bags.  Now you will need enough tea bags to let the tea liquid be strong but not bitter.   Bring everything to a solid roaring boil and turn heat to a low simmer.  Add salt and star anise.   The salted tea brine should be fairly salty.
4. Let the eggs simmer in tea liquid for 15 minutes before turning heat off to let the tea eggs soak.

** The salted tea brine should just cover the eggs.

5. The trick to really good tea eggs is in the marinating. Keep eggs overnight in the fridge after the first day, and bring the eggs to a roaring boil and simmer 5 minutes each day.   The eggs should be ready after 1 day of marinating.   The eggs get better and better as they become more marinated.

Tip:  Your tea brine should be fairly salty.  Or your tea will just take on color but no flavor.

We are purist.  That means we do not like to add in soy sauce or anything else other than salt, star anise and tea in our marinating liquid.    But if you are in a hurry, add a dash of soy sauce.