Unusual Ingredients: 1000 Year Eggs

Well, everyday is a school day and no mistake.  I stumbled upon, today, an ingredient I had never heard of before but the name of which sounded pretty cool - 1000 year eggs; also known as century eggs, pine-patterned eggs (due to the branch-like patterns that sometimes appear on the surface of the egg) or pidan in Chinese.

That's them above.  Certainly, the naming seems to be spot on - they certainly look like they're late Ming Dynasty.

So, basically a 1000 year egg is a preserved egg.  Chicken, duck or quail eggs are preserved within a mixture of salt, ash, lime, clay and rice hulls for a few weeks to up to a couple of months.  Now, what happens is all that alkaline stuff raises the pH balance of the egg, and the end result is a yolk that turns a creamy, greenish-grey (smelling strongly of sulphur and ammonia) and the egg white becomes a translucent brown, flavourless jelly.

Tasty, huh?

They can be eaten on their own, but they're also used in a wide variety of Far Eastern cookery from China to Taiwan.  One such recipe is 'old-and-fresh eggs' where these little stinkers are added to omelettes made of fresh eggs.  Sounds a bit of an egg overload to me...

Rumour had it that century eggs were actually preserved in horse urine.  That is not true, people.  The overpowering whiff of ammonia, created when proteins in the egg break down, probably gave rise to that idea.  So while the mere sight of them may make you think of a zombie movie, you can at least chow down safe in the knowledge that they didn't get that way as a result of wee.  So that's good news.

The name *is* pretty cool though, so I'd give them a whirl.  Also, the outside (see below), when encrusted with the clay and ash etc. looks a little like a dragon egg prop from a film set - which appeals to my inner geek.  Either that, or an owl pellet...  :-/