Name: Marbelized Tea Eggs (茶葉蛋)
Yield: Count on 1 egg per person at a smaller meal, ½ egg per person at a multicourse dinner.
Cuisine: Chinese
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons cinnamon or orange-spiced black tea leaves; 6 medium or 8 large eggs; 2 tablespoons black tea leaves plus one 2-inch length cinnamon stick, crumbled plus 1 thumb-size piece fresh or home-dried orange or tangerine peel, white pith removed; 1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt; ¼ teaspoon coarse kosher salt; 2 whole star anise, broken into 16 individual points; 1 tablespoon black soy sauce; 4 teaspoons Constant Comment spiced tea leaves; 1 tablespoon thin (regular) soy sauce

Preparation info

Count on
1
egg per person at a smaller meal .

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking

By Barbara Tropp

Published 1982

About

As a child growing up on ballet and opera in America, intermission was synonymous with a carton of sticky orange drink. Later, as a young adult addicted to Peking opera in Taipei, intermission meant a chance to rush outside for a tea egg, snatched steaming from the portable kitchen of an itinerant vendor—a pail of richly scented, tea-brewed eggs set over a second pail of glowing coals, which at the opera’s end was dismantled and carried to another busy corner.