Autumn is coming, it will be nice to eat warm boiled eggs! In Taiwan, you can get hot tea eggs in any convenient store. They bring you good energy from the start of the day, and also the comfy food after a tiring day at work. When the doors open in the convenient store, you can smell the nice tea and cinnamon fragrance. That is the familiar fragrance to me.
Cooking tea eggs is very easy. First, prepare the sauce: 3 tablespoons of soy sauce, 2 slices of cinnamon barks, 1 teaspoon of rock sugar, some white pepper powder, 2 bags of tea and 1 jar of water to half cover your eggs. Second, taste the sauce, see how you like it. If too salty, maybe add more water, if too weak, you may add 1 star anise, some chilli powder, and more soy sauce. Third, boil eggs in the previous sauce for 5 minutes, make sure the eggs are nearly cooked, so you can use a spoon to hit the eggs, and make sure the cracks appear, which allows eggs to absorb the sauce. Lastly, cook the eggs with sauce until the eggs turn to a very dark colour. Then you can cool the eggs down then enjoy. I usually cook in mid-heat for more than 1 hour and put the rest of the eggs into the fridge for the rest of the week.
There is no strict recipe for tea eggs, my mom puts 2 black tea bags into one pot. My friend likes to use the tea leaves after brewing three times from daily tea drinking. I think that’s a good way to recycle tea leaves. Some people prefer putting cola instead of sugar. So, it’s an interesting experiment of cooking tea eggs.
It makes me curious where tea eggs originate from? In ancient China, people who wanted to be a public servant had to pass the national exam. He liked the tea from his home town and drank at night during study. However, only drinking too much tea without having food causes hunger. Therefore his wife cooked boiling eggs with his favourite tea to provide enough energy. In order to make the eggs more delicious, she started to add some spices and that fragrance attracted their son. At that time, they didn't have proper income, so the mother didn’t allow the son to eat any eggs, only when the eggs were brok
en, which means a bad score. After the son noticed that, he started to hit the eggs in
the pot and ate those cracked eggs then caught by mother. Father felt sorry for his son’s behaviour, so allows him to eat the non broken egg. But, the son rejected him. At the beginning, they thought their son didn't want parents to be upset, later on, they realized those cracked eggs are more delicious than non cracked one. That is the story of tea eggs, hope you enjoy it. Why not brew some tea, keep the tea leaves then start making tea eggs!