Thanks to Vivian’s post about eggs, I started lusting after some tea eggs, a la my mother. I e-mailed her to ask what she did, and she called me back (from China!) about it. Here are her instructions – loosely translated, of course:
Ingredients:
- Eggs
- Dark soy sauce (mushroom flavored is good)
- Tea (loose or bagged) – black is the usual, but mother says anything goes. I would guess one bag for every 3 or so eggs.
- Sugar
- Star anise (??) – optional, but good for “more taste”
Directions:
- Cover the eggs with cold water and bring to a boil over low heat
- Boil for about 15 minutes (sounds like a long time to me but whatever)
- Drain the water and rinse the eggs in cold water until you can handle them
- Gently crack the eggshells, either by hand or with a spoon
- Add soy sauce, tea, star anise (if desired), and a tiny bit of sugar to enough water to cover the eggs
- Add the eggs and bring to a boil over low heat once again and let simmer for a couple of hours
- Let cool and continue to soak in the sauce in the fridge, at least overnight and up to a few days
- Enjoy them either warm or cold!
Even though Adrian claims to hate hardboiled eggs, I will be giving this a try after our weekend jaunt. I’ll try to remember to take pictures and write about it later on. Hopefully they’ll come out looking like this:

By the way, I know at least my coworkers noticed that I made my first post during work time. It’s true – I took a break from programming and made an entry. My bad! I’ll try to refrain from doing that from now on, although it’s hard not to write a short bit about something at the moment I am thinking about it. Maybe I can just file things away for publishing later or something like that.
2 responses to “Tea Eggs + Sorry!”
These are magnificent! I’m going to try making them for Easter and see if Zach will eat them.
Good idea! Much better than food dye with all those weird chemicals that come from who-knows-where.