Food Project- Soy Sauce Egg Yolk

This entry will be something new for me- I will be featuring something that I actually made! While researching on a Japanese breakfast where you break an egg onto hot rice and add soy sauce, I found something more interesting… and potentially more dangerous. So a fair bit of WARNING, this involves raw egg yolks so this is something to take note especially if you are cautious about salmonella and other forms of food poisoning. That being said, I just realized that this may not be the best first “I just made this” entry but I wanted to feature this since it was really easy to make.

And the ingredients are:

Eggs

Soy sauce

Mirin (Japanese cooking wine)

Nothing too complicated here, separate the egg yolks from the whites. Set aside the whites since you do not need them… you can make a nice egg white omelets or maybe meringue. Next, prepare a marinade by mixing the soy sauce and mirin. The proportions for the marinade are two parts of soy sauce and one part mirin. Just make sure you have enough of the liquid and a large enough bowl so that the egg yolks are all floating on the mixture and are not cramped. Place the egg yolks and marinade in the refrigerator and the waiting begins. I do not know how long they will last even if refrigerated but, personally, I would consume them within four days.

The idea of this recipe is that the salt in the soy sauce will draw out some of the liquids of the yolk while it and the mirin impart some flavor to the yolks. Over time, the flavor will become stronger and the texture changes. I noticed that after eight hours, the yolks have already started to change color, with the edges darkening and starting to turn translucent. I started making this batch in the late afternoon and I decided to wait until the 16-hour mark until I finally try one.

After 16 hours, you can really see that the edges have become darker. I had that one piece for breakfast with rice and shredded seaweed. The yolk was still slightly runny and had a slight salty taste to it. I really went well with the seaweed and I was pleased with the results, even if I accidentally used too much seaweed. The remaining yolks I planned to eat on the fourth day, just to see how it is. Yes, that really is stretching the limits of my personal preference for food safety but it was worth experimenting.

On the second day, the yolks were starting to sink into the liquid and the edges are becoming darker. On the fourth day, the yolks have stopped floating and are completely submerged in the liquid and losing practically all the yellow color. Now here is the day of reckoning… this time with less seaweed and twice the yolks. Funny thing is, the whole thing ended up looking like a Kamen Rider. This was not on purpose; I just wanted to use the seaweed as a partition to the yolks. Outside of the liquid, the yolks look like soft jelly chews and have a more “solid” texture. Even when you cut into it, the yolk has already become thick and viscous and does not run. After four days, I can say that the wait has been worth it, especially if you like your eggs cooked sunny side up and the yolks runny. I do not know if I will be making this again in the future since this recipe uses a relatively large amount of soy sauce and mirin but the results were good and definitely worth the wait.