Pleasantly sweet and sour with a strong ginger flavor, the eggs are incredibly tender and silky smooth.
This dish, known as "Crab Without Crab," is essentially sweet and sour scrambled eggs—a true lazy cook's recipe. However, there are a few tricks to making the eggs fluffy and silky smooth. Also, be sure to mix the sauce in exact proportions, or it won't capture that crab-like flavor. This dish is especially great with rice; you'd normally be full after one boiled egg, but here, three eggs disappear effortlessly without you even noticing.
Ingredients
Main Ingredients
3 eggs
Besides eggs, duck eggs and quail eggs also work, though they may have a stronger gamey flavor, so add a bit more Shaoxing wine accordingly.
Additional Ingredients
dried shrimp a small amount
Seasonings for the sauce
10 g soy sauce
15 g (about 1 tablespoon) vinegar
5 g (about 1 teaspoon) Shaoxing wine
12 g (about 1 tablespoon) white sugar
15 g ginger
Scallion - a small amount
You may have noticed that when scrambling eggs, even a small amount of salt can make them taste too salty, because eggs don't absorb salt well. So for this dish, no salt is needed—just soy sauce is enough.
Instructions
Instructions
Preparation
Step 1: Finely mince the scallions and ginger and set aside (Image 2). Beat the eggs, then finely chop the dried shrimp and add them to the eggs along with a little minced ginger (Image 3), and beat until well combined.
*Beat the eggs thoroughly until the egg mixture is completely uniform, otherwise the cooked eggs will have unattractive white and yellow patches. Since dried shrimp have a slight fishy smell, be sure to add minced ginger to eliminate the odor.
Mix the sauce: In a small bowl, combine 1 tablespoon rice vinegar, 1 tablespoon cooking wine, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon sugar, 1 teaspoon minced ginger, and 1 tablespoon water, stirring until the sugar and salt dissolve.
② Mix all the sauce seasonings together in a bowl until well combined and set aside (Image 4).
*Make sure to stir the sauce thoroughly, especially ensuring the sugar is fully dissolved; otherwise, you won't be able to pour out all the sauce, which will throw off the balance of seasonings and affect the flavor.
Use more ginger and vinegar than other seasonings to create a flavor reminiscent of crab.
Lightly scramble the eggs.
Heat the wok, add enough oil and heat until it's about 80% hot (just starting to smoke), then pour in the beaten eggs (Image 5). Turn the heat to high and stir-fry until the eggs form into fluffy chunks, then remove from the wok and set aside (Image 6).
*The oil for scrambling the eggs should be slightly generous, and be sure to use high heat throughout — this keeps the scrambled eggs light and fluffy. If you use too little oil or low heat, the temperature won't be high enough, causing the eggs to turn tough and absorb more oil.
*Don't overcook the eggs—just until they're set, so the texture stays tender.
A savory sauce for braising.
④ Without washing the pan, pour the sauce directly into the pan where the eggs were cooked and bring it to a boil over high heat (Image 7).
*To allow the flavors of the various seasonings to fully release, you need to briefly simmer the sauce over high heat on its own. There's no need to add extra oil for this step—simply use the same pan you used to scramble the eggs.
Scrambled eggs
⑤ Stir the scrambled eggs into the sauce mixture until evenly coated, then remove from the wok and serve (Figure 8).
*Once the eggs are fully coated in the sauce, remove from heat—don't overcook them.