Pre-COVID I frequented a Chinese tea house in DC pretty often called Ching Ching Cha. I’ve written about it before, you can check it out here!

One of the visits I tried their tea eggs and wow, they were good! They have this potent aroma and flavor that really elevated the eggs. Ever since then I wanted to try it but was afraid I would ruin a bunch of eggs.

Fast forward to last week and I found a recipe that was relatively simple and while I didn’t get ALL the ingredients, I got most of them and made a few tweaks.

Here is the original recipe!

One big change is that I made only 4 eggs instead of the 12 in the recipe. The recipe mentions 12 eggs but because you are essentially boiling the eggs then placing them in the broth, I think the number of eggs can vary without causing any problems.

For my broth, here are the changes I made to the recipe based on availability of what I had.

4 eggs soft boiled
3 star anise
1 cinnamon stick
4 slices ginger
2 teaspoons sichuan peppercorns
2 tbsp Ritual from Aera Tea
3 Bay Leaves
4 tbsp soy sauce
2 tsp salt
A dash of mirin
A dash of rice vinegar

The method for this is very simple:

Bring the eggs to room temperature and boil them to your preference of hardness. Put them aside.
In a medium sized pot, take all your ingredients (minus the eggs) and bring that to a boil. Let it boil for a little bit. The original recipe called for 10 minutes but I left it a little longer until it was very fragrant. Turn it off and let it cool completely.
Crack the eggs all over to allow the broth to seep in. Place the eggs into the completely cooled broth.
Make sure the eggs are totally covered by the broth.
Let them sit in the broth in the fridge for 24 hours at least. You can leave them for longer! I took 2 out after 24 hours and left the other 2 for another day.

While my eggs didn’t come out as marbled as I would have liked, these were delicious!!!!! They are so fragrant and the flavors of the tea and spices seeped into the eggs well! I think these are a really simple and fun treat! If you have a lot of tea, this is a great experiment. I definitely want to try using other teas as well!