Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food Styling by Erika Joyce
If you walked into my front door after a typical school day in the early ’00s, you’d stumble upon a trail of loose socks, an L.L. Bean bag, and my pants (yes the hard pants dropped as soon as I walked through that door). Metaphorical breadcrumbs, if you will, all leading to a kitchen island where an Asian American kid with no pants on would be munching away at the most delectable salty treat—a fragrant hard-boiled egg marinated in soy sauce, aromatics, and Taiwanese red tea from his grandma.
These eggs are unassuming. On the surface they’re just hard-boiled eggs that have been dyed brown by marinating in a pot of flavored liquid. They can be found sitting in generic Tupperware containers in many Asian American fridges across the country, basking in fluorescent light, waiting to become a handheld snack for an infant or the perfect accompaniment to a father's bowl of braised pork belly over rice.
Unveil that Tupperware lid and you’ll be in for a surprise. When cut in half, the egg whites are permeated with a deep brown color that graduates to white toward the center where the yolk lives. Its flavor is complex, having been transformed by a bath steeped with aromatics like star anise, cinnamon, bay leaves, peppercorns, ginger, and whatever else happens to make an appearance in your family recipe. These eggs have been a constant in my life, the same way a bag of Cheetos (I still joyfully eat Cheetos as a grown 31-year-old adult) or a familiar bowl of rice has been.
They're a constant on the kitchen island—a meal before the meal as my family stir fries vegetables and washes dishes while munching on tea eggs. They're the snack we take on to airplanes, where aunties will unveil a plastic container of tea eggs wrapped in four grocery bags and one roll of Bounty paper towels like they're smuggling drugs. They're the tradition during my Thanksgiving dinners, where a warm platter of quartered tea eggs, tender beef tendon, bamboo shoots, and sliced marinated tofu sit alongside racks of Corky's barbecue ribs and green bean casserole, a distinctly Taiwanese-American table.
Every family's iteration of tea eggs is just a little bit different. My grandma loves her tea eggs packed with earthy Taiwanese red tea (a type of black tea) with subtle hints of soy sauce, salt, anise, and sugar. She cooks her tea eggs traditionally, by boiling them and then slightly cracking them open with a spoon before simmering them again for another 20–25 minutes, bathing the egg in flavor over time. This leaves the glossy surface covered in amber lines, like a map of rivers spreading across the surface of the egg.
Personally, I love soaking my eggs in a base of soy sauce and oolong tea. I find that the toasty, sweet notes of oolong pair perfectly with ginger, bay leaf, anise, and cinnamon. I also tend to make my tea eggs soft-boiled. Instead of simmering them for long periods of time, I crack open the shells once they are lightly cooked and let the eggs sit in a marinade overnight in the fridge, building flavor without overcooking them into a rubbery, chalky consistency. There's something about a bite of creamy yolk with the fragrant salty egg white that feels so decadent.
These are delicious on their own, but as a Midwestern kid powered by Wonder Bread, I can barely resist placing a soft-boiled tea egg on a toasted carb. When I need a quick breakfast, a simple tea egg dipped in Everything Seasoning from Trader Joe's has become a new classic. The salty garlic crunch paired with the creamy egg has become its own kitchen island tradition—except this time, I’m wearing pants.