Description
🚚 Fastest delivery time: 2-day delivery.
🐝 Supplier / Place of Origin: Made in Hong Kong
🛍 Product Information:
Product ingredients: fresh duck eggs, salt, alkaline
Century eggs (Chinese: 皮蛋; pinyin: pídàn; Jyutping: pei4 daan2), also known as preserved eggs, hundred-year eggs, thousand-year eggs, thousand-year-old eggs, millennium eggs, skin eggs, black eggs or old eggs, are a Chinese egg-based culinary dish made by preserving duck, chicken or quail eggs in a mixture of clay, ash, salt, quicklime, and rice hulls for several weeks to several months, depending on the method of processing.
Through the process, the yolk becomes a dark green to grey color, with a creamy consistency and strong flavor due to the hydrogen sulfide and ammonia present, while the white becomes a dark brown, translucent jelly with a salty flavor. The transforming agent in the century egg is an alkaline salt, which gradually raises the pH of the egg to around 9–12, during the curing process. This chemical process breaks down some of the complex, flavorless proteins and fats, which produces a variety of smaller flavorsome compounds.
Some eggs have patterns near the surface of the egg white which are likened to pine branches. These patterned eggs are regarded as having better quality than the normal century eggs and are called Songhua eggs, also known as pine flower eggs or pine-patterned eggs (Chinese: 松花蛋).
Uses
Century eggs can be eaten without further preparation other than peeling and rinsing them – on their own, or as a side dish. In central China, they are sliced into pieces and drizzled with some black vinegar and served as a side dish. As an hors d'œuvre, the Cantonese wrap chunks of this egg with slices of pickled ginger root (sometimes sold on a stick as street food). A Shanghainese recipe mixes chopped century eggs with chilled tofu. In Taiwan, it is popular to eat sliced century eggs placed on top of cold tofu with katsuobushi, soy sauce, and sesame oil, in a style similar to Japanese hiyayakko. A variation of this recipe common in northern China is to slice century eggs over chilled silken (soft) tofu, adding liberal quantities of shredded young ginger and chopped spring onions as a topping, and then drizzling light soy sauce and sesame oil over the dish, to taste. They are also used in a dish called old-and-fresh eggs, where chopped century eggs are combined with (or used to top) an omelette made with fresh eggs.[9] The century eggs may also be cut into chunks and stir fried with vegetables, which is most commonly found in Taiwanese cuisine.
Some Chinese households cut them up into small chunks and cook them with rice porridge to create "century egg and lean pork congee" (Chinese: 皮蛋瘦肉粥; pinyin: pídàn shòuròu zhōu). This is sometimes served in dim sum restaurants. Rice congee, lean pork, and century egg are the main ingredients. Peeled century eggs are cut into quarters or eighths and simmered with the seasoned marinated lean slivers of pork until both ingredients are cooked into the rice congee. Fried dough sticks known as youtiao are commonly eaten with century egg congee. Another common variation of this dish is the addition of salted duck eggs into the congee mixture.
Misconception and etymology
Foreigners who first arrived in China do not know what preserved eggs are, and believe that they must be stored for a long time before they turn black, so they are called "Century Egg" (Century Egg, Hundred-year Egg) or "Thousand-year Egg" in English. Also because of its unique taste, Westerners could not accept it for a while, so it has the title of "Egg From Hell" or "Devil's Nuts", which has been handed down to this day. With the gradual international acceptance of preserved eggs, there is also the name of "Preserved Egg" (Preserved Egg or Preserved Duck Egg) in English. In addition, because tortoises have a long lifespan, a few people mistakenly think that preserved eggs are tortoise eggs that are centuries old.
Century eggs are sometimes avoided due to the belief that they are prepared by soaking eggs in horse urine, but there is no good evidence to support this, and furthermore urine is generally not alkaline. In Thai and Lao, the common word for century egg translates to "horse urine egg", due to the distinctive urine-like odor of the food.
Safety
Century eggs prepared in traditional ways are generally safe to consume. However, there have been incidents of malpractice in century egg production that causes eggs to be contaminated. In 2013, three factories in Jiangxi province were found to be using industrial copper sulphate in century egg production to shorten the production time. The industrial copper sulphate was contaminated with heavy metals and toxic chemicals.
🌱 Manufacturer introduction:
Li Huan Tang Preserved Egg Specialty Store
Shop B, G/F, Cheong Sang Commercial Building, 118 Wing Lok Street, Sheung Wan
