#Ari cooks

[ariadventures]

Tea Eggs!!

You know what I haven't written in a while? A cooking/food post! Someone asked me something on Twitter which got me thinking and I figured I'd finally write about making food again, so I'm pretty happy to have something to post on here again.

Immediately at the start of writing this I understand why recipes come with a background story, because cooking IS personal and at least, since I'm not a recipe blog, what investment do you really have in this if I'm not saying something about it? But I'll put the extraneous details after the recipe. This is far from a formal recipe and just a musing of what I did. I mostly did it to taste but these are some approximate measurements:

6-8 eggs 4 cups of water 4 bags black tea 3 tablespoons dark soy sauce 2 tablespoons regular soy sauce 1 tablespoon sugar 4 teaspoons salt 2 teaspoons Shaoxing wine 1 teaspoon five spice powder

Important to note: Make as many eggs as you want as long as it'll all fit in the marinade you make - it's gotta cover all of the eggs, no peekin' out. If you need less marinade, i.e. you're putting it in a tight ziplock bag, feel free to halve or otherwise divide the ingredients to fit.

Make the marinade in a saucepan with all the ingredients besides eggs. I started boiling the water and put the ingredients in one by one. I cut open the tea bags and dumped it all in. The five spice powder is out of convenience - if you look up all the spices included in it, like sichuan peppercorn and star anise and cinnamon etc., and have all of those on hand, you can use those as well, but this is a simple recipe for a simple person.

After mixed and boiling, let it cool off to the side.

Soft boil eggs in another pot, put them in an ice bath afterwards or run them under cold water for a few minutes, whatever your jam is.

Gently (GENTLY!!) use the back of a spoon or something to crack the eggshells while leaving them on, but not break through too much of the egg. The marinade is pretty strong so you could theoretically just completely peel them and soak them for a shorter amount of time, but I like to make them traditionally.

Put the eggs into the marinade and simmer/warm them for like, an hour. After that, let the marinade cool down again, cover it, and refrigerate it for up to 24 hours. That's it!

*Notes*

The dark soy sauce is mostly for the marbling/color of it. If you want a darker marbling, you can add more and reduce the salt. Like I mentioned, I did a lot of it kind of by vibes, so I added in a little more soy sauce and salt myself.

I had a test egg after I simmered them for an hour. Simmer? Warm? As long as it's not boiling, you don't actually want to thoroughly cook the eggs unless you're okay with super overboiled eggs. Tasted good, but did taste so much better after soaking for a day. I note soft boiled above because when you simmer them they do cook a bit again, and traditionally it is hard-boiled, but if you want them not overboiled you should do the soft boil initially.

As seen in the picture above, I marinated it in a saucepan overnight and put some clingwrap over it. My first attempt I only made 3 eggs, and they fit in a mason jar so I just put it all in a mason jar and used maybe half of that recipe above. If you don't want a big ole saucepan, you can also put the marinade in a big ziplock bag that'll stay securely tight. As long as the marinade is covering ALL of the egg!

This is what I mean by marbling! OBVIOUSLY these pictures aren't great (I have never claimed to be a photographer) but this is just to show what the end result should look like. Sometimes the marbling doesn't really come through but it still tastes nice!

I grew up with tea eggs always at the grocery store and able to grab 'em any time I wanted. They were usually always warmed in a crock pot as you grabbed them with tongs, but since I'm not running a crock pot for days as I finish eating them all I have them cold and they're still glorious. You can honestly marinade them 8-24 hours or so, I just like marinading for longer so the color really comes through and for more of the taste to soak in. Marinade them too long and I think they'll get too salty. It's a great subtle flavor, and you can reuse the marinade for another batch if you're making more in a short amount of time (refresh ingredients a lil that may have evaporated) or I know you can theoretically cook meat and vegetables in that marinade so you'll have something tasty from it.

I'm (AS USUAL, everyone moans) having culture feels and been wanting to cook more as a result. Most of it has manifested in veggie soup or varying noodle dishes, but tea eggs are near and dear to my heart and honestly I am so glad they were easier to make than I thought. I have a lot of weird vibes and euughh, trauma 🙄 over being in the kitchen just due to weird family stuff I grew up with so cooking is a real chore for me. Ultimately this uses two small pots (saucepans? pots? whatever they're called) and a tablespoon so the dishes to clean afterwards is minimal.

I really like the tea eggs and I really like that I can make them now, and I wanted to share that. I will probably fixate on them for a hot second! They've got such a nice flavor and my whole apartment smells good after. Let me know if you make any! Thanks for reading.

[kanskje-kaffe]

Braised mixed cabbage and brown butter sesame miso hanagiri mushrooms on sushi rice 😍 This calls for a cross-departmental investigation overseen by the Jedi council!

Happy New Year everyone!

[ave-ari]

Blueberry pie version 2! For roommate B’s birthday this time.

It has earl grey and orange zest, and an apple on it for absolutely no good reason.

[glamoroussource]

olivia cooke for savage x fenty, 2022.

[lost-in-lamentation]

Leviathan: *explaining theories about TSL*

Solomon: what is he even talking about

MC: shut up, let him cook

Solomon: cook what?? we're literally in a theater??

[lilacevans]

[riyacrane]

[strawberrystepmom]

no but imagine being at the 8th division headquarters to visit akitaru and everyone’s like “captain obi captain obi” and he’s like “just a second im busy” but he’s busy listening to u explain the plot of ratatouille to him

[kicktwine]

ari update: botany

[analvirgo]

🥪 Best Sandwich Artist 🥪

Qualifications:

High Speed Delivery

Premium Quality Ingredients

Right Ingredient Combinations

Good Presentation, Easy to Handle

Mastered Hygiene (Noncontaminating)

"Is it even edible?"

12. Aquarius/Uranus (1.5/5)

11. Scorpio/Pluto (2/5)

10. Virgo/Chiron (2.5/5)

Basic Sandwich:

9. Capricorn/Saturn (2.5/5)

8. Aries/Mars (3/5)

7. Pisces/Neptune (3/5)

Supreme Sandwich:

6. Libra/Venus (3.5/5)

5. Cancer/Moon (3.5/5)

4. Leo/Sun (3.5/5)

Extra Special Made Sandwich:

3. Taurus/Ceres (4/5)

2. Sagittarius/Jupiter (4/5)

1. Gemini/Mercury (4.5/5)

(.5 = Maybe*)

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

finally cleaned up my ml a bit & came to the shocking conclusion that i like my sugu fics a lot more than my toru fics which i think is a sign that i need to write more of him ….. starting to feel like i’m neglecting my sweetie 😔😔😔

[silvergyus]

LINE COOK YEONJUN GRAAAAHHH

[preposterous-hippopotamus]

3B is giving

[ave-ari]

Blueberry pie for Roommate 2’s birthday!

(Is it rude to call her Roommate 2. I may call them Roommate B and Roommate E.)

Anyway, roommate B also likes blueberry pie so we are in business for people to eat this thing lmao

[glamoroussource]

olivia cooke for harper's bazaar uk winter 2022.

[mappingthemoon]

i was in my 30s before i realized i should read through the entire recipe (not just the ingredients list) before starting to make it (and even then it has taken me years to consistently remember this step, haha). seems obvious maybe, but no one ever taught me to cook, or use my brain, for that matter. also have i mentioned that i'm an aries