Soy-Sauce Eggs and Sticky Rice
Makes 3 to 6 servings
There is so much to love about this dish, including how I came to make it. I first heard about it during a chance meeting at the market with a Korean woman who introduced herself as Nicole. She told me that even though she lives in exurban Connecticut, she continues to cook traditional Korean foods for her family. We’d only spoken for a few minutes before she asked if I’d ever made soy sauce eggs. I hadn’t, so she proceeded to tell me the recipe: Put egg yolks in a bowl with soy sauce, cover and refrigerate overnight. When you’re ready to serve, cook sticky rice, mix the rice with butter and a little sesame oil and top with some of the egg yolks. “You’ll want it every day,” she said, and she was right. Then she gave me a last tip: If you know kids who are picky eaters, make them this. Children love it!
Never having heard of soy-sauce eggs, I was delighted to find a story about them in the New York Times just two days later. The Times story was titled “Drinking Food,” and the dish, made by a Japanese bar owner, was served with plenty of sake and beer.
It’s an all-things-to-all-people dish! And, yes, young picky eaters with a bent for Asian flavors do, indeed, love this, as do grown-ups with a thirst for sake and beer.
a word about serving size
It would be easy to eat several eggs at a sitting — the umami factor here is high — but it wouldn’t be wise; in its own simple way, the dish is rich. I like to serve a small bowl of rice with one egg yolk as an appetizer or a slightly bigger portion of rice with a couple of yolks if I’m also serving a salad. If you’re serving this as “drinking food,” I leave it to you to decide how much each drinker needs.
- For the eggs
- ½ cup (120 ml) soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon mirin (optional)
- 6 impeccably fresh egg yolks, preferably organic local eggs (size doesn’t matter)
- For the rice
- 1½ cups (270 grams) short-grain sushi rice or other sticky rice
- 3 cups (720 ml) water
- ½ teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1 to 3 tablespoons unsalted butter (to taste)
- Asian sesame oil
Working Ahead
Start the egg yolks at least 5 hours and up to 1 day ahead.
To make the eggs: At least 5 hours ahead, pour the soy sauce and mirin, if you’re using it, into a small deep bowl or a Pyrex measuring cup. Add the yolks, cover tightly and refrigerate. Don’t “baste” the eggs during this time; they’ll pickle nicely bobbing in the soy. (The yolks can be refrigerated for up to 1 day.)
To make the rice: Put the rice in a strainer or colander and run cold water over it until the water runs clear, a minute or so. Stir the rice, water and the salt together in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil, then stir, cover the pan, reduce the heat to low and cook until the water is absorbed and the rice is tender, usually 14 to 18 minutes (although it can take longer). Remove the pan from the heat.
To serve, spoon the rice into bowls and stir in as much butter as you’d like. (I find the eggs and rice fairly rich and so only gloss the top of the rice, but many people like a real pat of butter.) Sprinkle the rice sparingly with sesame oil. Spoon an egg yolk or two into each bowl, followed by as much of the soy sauce as you’d like.
You can eat this with a spoon, but I think chopsticks are best. Poke the yolk with a chopstick, stir to mix everything lightly and enjoy.
Storing: You can keep the soy-sauce eggs in the refrigerator for longer than a day, but they’ll get firmer. For me, part of the lusciousness of the dish is the unctuousness of the yolk, which is lost after a day.
