Smashed Egg & Garlic
鸡蛋蒜
English: Smashed Egg & Garlic
Chinese: 鸡蛋蒜
Pinyin： jidan suan
Literal: Eggs and Garlic
I don’t often cook Shandong food at home. Much of it belongs to lu cai - grand, intricate braises and knife work worthy of a kung fu master - flamboyant cooking that shaped Beijing’s Imperial Court cuisine. However, it’s always a province’s humbler, home-style dishes that draw me in. Rustic cooking, after all, asks for imagination over perfection. It forces home cooks to think creatively, pushing simple ingredients as far as they can go. Take the egg, for instance. In Shandong, the answer is this: smash it with garlic until both become something far greater than the sum of their parts.
At first glance, it seems almost too plain - just eggs and garlic - yet what emerges is one of the boldest things you can put on the table. Think of it as China’s answer to egg salad: boiled eggs, roughly crushed by hand, then beaten together with raw garlic until they blur into a fragrant, fiery paste. In the north, where chilies are rare, garlic provides the heat - and here it kicks so hard it could score from the half-way line. A clove to an egg is enough to make your tongue hum, but the sesame, spring onion, and soy bring it back into balance, while the mashed egg lends the whole thing a creamy, almost aioli-like richness.
It’s a dish to share in small spoonfuls, not to devour in piles - rich, intense, a little outrageous. Like the best of Chinese home cooking, it sits happily among other plates, waiting to be revisited between bites. Best of all, it’s quick: the sort of dish you can pull together in minutes when the table looks one plate short.
Serves 3 - 4
Ingredients
5 eggs
5/6 cloves of garlic ( about 1 ½ tablespoons when crushed)
2 spring onions - finely chopped (about 1 ½ tablespoons)
1 teaspoon oyster sauce
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon sesame seeds
2 tablespoons oil (neutral, for heating)
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 spring onion (green part only), finely sliced, for garnish
Method
Boil the eggs until just hard. For medium eggs, about 4 minutes does the trick. Drain, rinse under cold water, and peel.
Smash the eggs with your hands until they form a rough, uneven paste. You can use a pestle and mortar if you prefer, though a knife will give you neat cubes rather than that rustic smashed texture. Transfer to a mixing bowl.
Prepare the seasoning. In a small bowl, combine the garlic, chopped spring onions, oyster sauce, soy sauce, and sesame seeds.
Heat the oil in a wok until it begins to smoke, then pour it directly over the garlic mixture — it should sizzle and release a wave of fragrance.
Combine. Pour the hot sauce over the eggs and mix gently but thoroughly. As you stir, drizzle in the sesame oil.
Finish and serve. Scatter over the sliced green spring onion. Serve immediately — the texture is best while still loose and glossy. If left too long, the mixture tends to tighten and turn sticky.
