I just did quail eggs like this for a Christmas appetizer. I found it necessary to make a really strong black tea; I let it simmer for maybe 15 or twenty minutes. I let the eggs steep in the marinade for another 20 minutes over low heat. The eggs were starting to get a good "craze" after three days or so. Now, they are really intensely flavored and delicious. Next time I would skip the hot steep altogether as the yolks are greenish around the edges, although any sulfurous smell is unnoticeable under the tea and spice.
Cha Ye Dan (Chinese Tea Eggs)
Cooked in a flavorful marinade of soy sauce, star anise, and cinnamon, these tea-stained eggs are a Lunar New Year staple and a favorite everyday snack in China. This recipe first appeared in the 2012 SAVEUR 100, with the article Chinese Tea Eggs.
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Credit: Todd Coleman
INGREDIENTS
½ cup soy sauce½ cup sugar
½ tsp. whole black peppercorns
½ tsp. fennel seeds
8 whole cloves
2 whole star anise
2 sticks cinnamon
1 tbsp. loose-leaf smoked tea, such as lapsang souchong (available from Amazon
)8 eggs
INSTRUCTIONS
Bring soy sauce, sugar, peppercorns, fennel, cloves, star anise, cinnamon, and 2 cups water to a boil in a 2-qt. saucepan; remove from heat and add tea. Let steep for 10 minutes. Pour marinade through a fine strainer into a bowl and keep warm. Place eggs in a 4-qt. saucepan; cover by ½″ with cold water. Place saucepan over high heat and bring to a boil; cover pan, remove from heat, and let sit until eggs are soft-boiled, about 5 minutes. Drain eggs. Crack shells all over but do not peel eggs; return to saucepan along with marinade. Bring to a boil and let cook, stirring, for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and add 2 cups ice. Let cool in marinade before serving.Ratings & Reviews (6)
Recipe doesn't work as written. How do you boil 8 eggs in 1/2 cup of soy?
Maybe if you added the 2 cups of water to the soy suace it would help.
Still doesn't work
These turned out nicely, I would certainly recomend following the recipe but letting them sit in the marinade for several hours after adding the ice.
The recipe doesn't work at all as written. The eggs have to be boiled (rather than left sitting) for 5 minutes until the whites are really firm. Otherwise it's impossible to remove the shells without destroying the pattern - yes, we managed to make egg salad the first time. On the second try, we boiled the eggs for 5 minutes then rolled them to crack the shells and moved them into the marinade to boil for 7 minutes more, making sure there was lots of liquid and lots of tea. Then we plunged the eggs into cold water and carefully removed the shells and served them warm with green onion cakes. They were beautiful. And delicious.
Cha Ye Dan (Chinese Tea Eggs)
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 Recipe - Saveur.com){kind=link}