How To Petrify an Egg

When the weather turns wintery, chickens naturally stop laying eggs. To combat this, many egg producers will mimick warm weather conditions by using artificial lighting, which keeps the hens popping out eggs even when it's cold out.

Even so, I believe that we should still consider eggiwegs to be a seasonal commodity. I loaded up on eggs at the market in September, with the intent on some hard-core pickling. I tried spiced pickled eggs, and spicy ginger pickled eggs, but the best of the lot was good ol' garlic dill pickled eggs.

But there's only so much pickled eggs that one can eat... not to mention the foul smelling gas that one produces after eating all those pickled eggs. So I also made a few tea eggs for fun.

Tea eggs are serious yummers. Dark caramel brown in colour, with a smokey, complex flavour. And so easy to make... just boil some eggs in tea and soy sauce, and enjoy! Or is it? Hm...

I sooo wanted to have my eggs turn out gorgeous like the ones in the above recipe. I followed the instructions exactly, or so I thought. When I took the eggs out after 3 hours of boiling, I realized something was horribly wrong.

Reading the recipe the second time and applying some logic, the problem because so obvious. I was supposed to KEEP the egg-boiling water, and add the ingredients to it. Instead, I had basically boiled eggs in a solution of soy sauce PLUS salt and NO WATER for 3 hours. But I just can't bear food being wasted. So I ate those rubbery, shriveled and incredibly salty eggs over the course of a week. Shiver.

One more quick note before I sign-off. Peeling the shell from an ultra-fresh chicken egg can be a maddening experience. My good friend shared a tip with me on how to keep your blood pressure low in this stressful situation: make a slight crack on the bottom (large) end of the egg before boiling. Something about the pressure inside the egg equalizing with the outside, she says. Ta-da! One sexy looking egg.