Steamed Eggs with Dried Mushrooms

This is a simple dish and most often an inexpensive one. It's a simple savory custard. I've not come across it in restaurants, but it shows up in a number of cookbooks.  You'll often see it with shrimp or ham. Dried or preserved meats are the more traditional but fresh shrimp is probably what I see the most of in modern cookbooks and websites. The toppings are usually on the salty side to accent the mild custard. It can be made in individual servings or in a single larger vessel.

This is a dish of ratios that's easy to expand or shrink as needed, and it's one reason I prefer to make it ramekins so I don't have to hunt up a dish of the right size or worry about different timing.

Per person you want to feed:

1 large egg

1/4 cup + approximately 1 tablespoon extra stock/liquid appropriate to the protein garnish. If you're using dried ingredients, you can use the leftover soaking liquid from re-hydrating them. Keep the extra amount for building the sauce.

salt to taste for the eggs/stock combination. Soy sauce can be used to, but keep in mind the final color of your custard.

white pepper or hot sauce to taste--I used black pepper in the photos for this post and it doesn't look right as you'll see.


Sauce: amounts for 1 person are so small, I left them unstated. I give the amount I used for 6 in parentheses

about 2 dried mushrooms per person
minced garlic ( 2 medium cloves)
minced ginger (1/2 inch piece peeled)
rice wine (2 tablepoons)
the extra mushroom soaking liquid, strained of grit (a bit under 1/2 cup)
soy sauce (1 tablepsoon)
oyster sauce (2 tablespoons)
corn starch slurry as needed

For the photos here, I was making this at a friend's house I brought my steamer and the basic ingredients, but was counting on my friend for basic seasonings, thus my use of black pepper. Further, I was cooking for 6 people including a seafood allergy and a vegetarian, so dried mushrooms were the proper ingredient.

Using the common dried black mushroom commonly used in Chinese cooking will work just fine. They're in the big tub on the right. But I had a few other types of dried mushrooms and thought they'd be fun to work with in a blend.

Add your mushrooms to enough water to cover. Bring to a boil, or just pour boiling water over your mushrooms. Let stand off heat 20 minutes. Reserve all liquid, but strain out any grit.

I like to wring out the mushrooms lightly in my hand so they're not soggy. Again, keep the liquid. Then chop them up.

Set up your steamer, fill with water, enough to boil for 10 minutes or so, and put on the heat. 

Combine the eggs, the amount of stock or soaking liquid and seasonings. My friend had no white pepper and while he as hot sauce, I just grabbed black pepper without thinking much about it.

Portion into the ramekins. When your water is boiling, load your steamer. I'm using a 30 cm, two level stainless steel steamer. Steam about 10 minutes. Time will vary with the shape of your ramekins and your altitude and such. I'm cooking at close to 5000 feet so your cooking time may vary. Watch closely the last few minutes so you don't overcook your custard.  The lower tier will cook faster and is more prone to bubble and froth.

You can carefully scrape the surface of the custard if it is bubbly or frothy to improve the appearance and delicacy of the dish.  Or if you're going to sauce if more heavily, it doesn't matter as much.

While the eggs are steaming, prepare your sauce.

Heat a little oil in a wok or pan. Add the mushrooms, garlic and ginger. Stir fry/saute for a minute or so for the flavor to develop. Reduce the heat and let it cook another minute, stirring frequently. Add the rice wine, mushroom liquid, soy sauce and oyster sauce.  Let it simmer for a minute or two, then adjust to your texture preference with the corn starch slurry.

Plate the individual ramekins and garnish with the mushrooms in the sauce. Here's where the black pepper choice reared its head. Notice the black specks especially along the edge of the custard. That's the pepper. Kind of messes up the look of the dish. It tastes just fine of course, but presentation counts too.

This is a versatile dish and can be served at breakfast, lunch or dinner. It can be an elegant course in a larger meal. 

V gives a good version of this with shrimp where she makes a shrimp stock from the shrimp heads and shells as well as some kombu.

Lee Kum Kee offers this shrimp version with XO sauce. I like the idea, but would have to reduce the amount of XO sauce as it's usually much hotter than I enjoy.

The ham variation is often not sauced or perhaps sauced with a simple clear michiu sauce. I see people often mix in the ham with the uncooked egg. That always settles to the bottom when I try to cook it that way. Others will add the ham in the last third of the cooking time when the custard is thick enough to support the ham.