Salted Egg Yolk Fried Chicken

For the uninitiated, salted egg yolk is the yolk from a salted duck egg. Salted duck eggs are a super popular Chinese ingredient. They’re made by soaking duck eggs in a salt brine, which helps preserve and creative flavor. Essentially they’re cured duck eggs. After brining, the duck eggs get a salty (duh) aroma with a firm gelatinous egg white and a perfectly round firm golden orange yolk. You can buy them at the Asian grocery store both already cooked (they’ve been steamed or boiled) and uncooked.

You’ll usually see the eggs with congee, added to stir fries, and steamed dishes. Maybe you’ve seen them in mooncakes? Since they’re so golden and round, they’re the symbolic full moon inside lotus paste and red bean mooncakes.

They’ve been called parmesan-like and while I get the comparison, they don’t taste anything like parmesan. They’re rich and punchy, with a salty-sweet savoriness that is hard to describe. When cooked (usually steamed) they take on a slight graininess, almost like the crystals in a really good cheese, which is probably why the parmesan comparison is floating around.

Just like parmesan, salted egg yolks are incredibly versatile. You can simply grate cooked egg yolks on to pasta, toast, or anything else you want to add a bit of oomph too. When you add salted egg yolks to a sauce, you’ll get an extra unctuous oozy cream, with so much umami.

Salted egg yolks are also a sweet ingredient too – you’ll find them molten and golden in liu sha bao (egg custard buns), croissants, cookies, bread, ice cream, french toast, macaron, you name it, it’s probably been salted egg yolk-ed.

Salted egg yolks are intensely beloved in Asian, especially Singapore. There’s been a glut of salted egg yolk foods and while some people think it’s a trend, it’s one that’s not going anywhere soon. It’s nice that such a traditional ingredient (it was first mentioned in writing in the 6th century) is still so beloved.

Alright, now we can get to the meat of it – this salted egg yolk fried chicken is essentially crispy deep fried chicken nuggets in a savory-sweet salted egg yolk sauce. You mash steamed, sunshiny orange salted egg yolks which turn into a deliciously rich and creamy and crumbly salted egg yolk sauce that hugs and coats every nook and cranny of the crispy fried chicken bits. If you’ve never had salted egg yolk fried chicken you’re in for a treat. It’s SO GOOD, especially the little salted egg yolk nubbins.