Last week I made J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s Ajitsuke Tamago recipe from The Wok.

The recipe is straightforward: marinate medium-boiled eggs for 4–12 hours.

Perfectly Peelable Steam-Boiled Eggs

This recipe is the first in the book to use Kenji’s Perfectly Peelable Steam-Boiled Eggs recipe (not in the Table of Contents).

Interestingly, Kenji calls for making a hole in the fat end of the raw eggs with a pushpin to allow air to escape, preventing the dimple on the bottom of the cooked egg.

The fresh-from-the-fridge, freshly-pricked eggs are gently rolled down the side of the wok into hard-boiling water. When done, Kenji says to peel immediately under cold running water.

Ajitsuke Tamago calls for medium-cooked eggs, which is 8.5 minutes according to this recipe.

The pricked ends didn’t cause any issues with egg white leaking out but had varying levels of success in creating a perfectly round egg.

Unfortunately, 8.5 minutes resulted in hard cooked eggs, so need to adjust the time down next time.

Marinating

With the eggs cooked and peeled, they’re placed in a bowl with water, sake, soy sauce, mirin, and dissolved sugar. Kenji uses a paper towel placed on top to absorb the marinade and keep the tops soaking. The marinade volume was about double for what I needed for 6 eggs. They marinate for 4–12 hours.

Overall it worked well. There were a few spots that somehow missed the marinade and stayed white. I don’t know if that was from the eggs touching each other or air gaps with the soaked paper towel. They tasted great. I served them with ramen but would happily eat them on their own.

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.