Salted duck egg

Three weeks in brine, and the only way to know they are ready is to open one.

Duck, Egg. Not vegetarian — contains duck.

Ingredients

• 12 duck eggs
• 400 g coarse salt, for the brine
• 2 litres water
• 2 tablespoons red food colouring, optional

Method

1. THREE WEEKS, AND THERE IS NO HURRYING IT. Salt has to move through the shell and set the yolk, and nothing you do to the brine makes that faster.
2. Check every egg in a bowl of water first. Any that float are old -- discard them. A bad egg will spoil the whole jar.
3. Boil the water with the salt until it dissolves, then cool it COMPLETELY. Warm brine starts cooking the eggs.
4. Pack the eggs into a jar and pour the cold brine over. Weight them under the surface.
5. Leave at room temperature, out of the sun, for 18 to 21 days.
6. FROM DAY 18, OPEN ONE AND BOIL IT to test. The white should be salty and the yolk firm, orange and slightly granular at the centre. Testing by date alone is guessing: egg size and shell thickness both change the clock.
7. When ready, boil the lot for 12 minutes, cool, and dye the shells if you want to tell them from fresh ones. They keep a month in the fridge.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Philippines · All recipes