korean drug eggs
℞. 마약계란 (mayak gyeran)
Take 2 eggs by mouth, daily
∞ refills
Signed by: Alex
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Active time: 15 minutes (Total: ~ 4 hrs)
Servings: 3-4 (1-2 eggs per person)
Ingredients
6 eggs
2 tbsp honey
¼ cup soy sauce
½ tbsp maesil / korean plum extract (optional)
1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
¼ cup water
1 tsp ginger
¼ cup leeks, sliced
¼ cup red onion, sliced
2 scallions, chopped,
2 cloves of garlic, finely diced
1 tbsp white sesame seeds
Recipe
1. To make jammy eggs: prepare a large bowl with ice-cold water. Set aside. In a medium-sized pot, boil water. Once water is boiling, add 6 eggs. Boil eggs for 6 minutes. (Yes, 6 minutes. Set a timer. You will forget.) After 6 minutes, immediately transfer eggs to ice-cold water bath.
Once eggs are cool to touch, crack and peel eggs.
2. To make marinade: mix 1/4 cup soy sauce, 1/4 cup water, 1 tbsp rice wine vinegar, 2 tbsp honey, and 1/2 tbsp maesil // korean plum extract (optional). Stir thoroughly to dissolve honey. (You could heat up the water and dissolve the honey in first. But ugh…I dislike extra steps.)
3. In a large jar, add jammy eggs, chopped alliums—2 cloves finely diced garlic (finely diced), 1/4 cup leeks (sliced), 2 scallions (chopped ), 1/4 cup red onion (sliced) —and 1 tsp ginger (grated). Add marinade and 1 tbsp white sesame seeds to the jar.
4. Let eggs marinate for at least 4 hours or overnight in the refrigerator.
Voila— 마약계란 // mayak gyeran.
“Ma” translates to “mind.” “Yak” translates to drug or medicine.
Together, “Mayak” translates to a “mind drug” or more specifically a “narcotic.”
“Gyeran” means egg.
….Thus, we call them drug eggs because they are so addictive. Please consume responsibly.
Place your eggs over rice, spoon marinade and pickled alliums on top, and add a drizzle sesame oil!
The eggs will keep up to 5 days in the refrigerator. If you use clean spoons to take eggs out of the jar, you can reuse the same marinade for another batch. The marinade will keep for up to 2 weeks.
Non-negotiables:
Ice water bath – The ice water bath immediately stops the cooking process. It also shocks the egg so that the whites firm up.
6 minutes – In the past, I’ve called for a 6.5 minute egg to make the perfect jammy egg. Yes, 6.5 minutes makes the perfect jammy egg to be consumed immediately. But in this recipe, the eggs are not consumed immediately. Instead, they are stored in the refrigerator to marinate. This cold marination congeals the yolk. Therefore, we decrease the cooking time by 30 seconds. Cooking the egg for 6 minutes normally makes a runny soft-boiled egg. “Undercooking” the egg allows the yolk to be a little more runny at first but perfectly jammy after the cold marination. Just trust me.
Wait at least 4 hours – After 4 hours, the marinade will permeate the egg whites and even yolk, which makes them so addictive.
Do not add sesame oil to the marinade itself. Sesame oil will cause the marinade to age faster. Just drizzle the sesame oil over the egg itself once you’re ready to eat.
Try experimenting with:
Three kinds of alliums – I call for three specific alliums–leeks, red onion, and scallions. I like how each adds a different sharpness to the marinade. The leeks add a garlicky sweetness. The scallions add a peppery bite. The red onion provides a mild body to marry the two together! It also makes the eating experience a lot more entertaining because you can top your egg with not one, not two, but three pickled alliums in different shapes and sizes! My mouth gets bored very quickly, and this variety of texture keeps me entertained. Feel free to add the pickled alliums to your sandwich, salad, etc. too! There are many mayak gyeran recipes, but I think the combination of these three alliums in the marinade and once pickled are the factors that set my recipe apart from the rest.
But, if you don’t have one of these alliums on hand, feel free to substitute. During recipe development, I also tried shallots and yellow onion. You’ll get different nuances of flavors. If you only have two alliums, that’s okay too–just substitute the third allium for more of one of the ones you already have. For example, you have have red onions and scallions? Just double red onion!
Nice eggs – I don’t eat or buy meat, so I allow myself to indulge in buying pasture-raised or Certified Humane eggs. In my humble opinion, I’ve noticed pasture-raised eggs, laid by hens in an open field (instead of caged up or in a limited range), have sturdier, stronger shells. They hold up in boiling water and are easier to peel. The yolks are plumper too.
Vinegar in boiling water – Legend has it that adding a little bit (a tbsp or so) makes the eggs easier to peel. In my recipe development, I didn’t notice a big difference. I think the variables that make eggs easiest to peel are: 1) using nice eggs and 2) peeling once entirely cool to touch so as to let the whites firm up.
Maesil/ Korean plum extract – Maesil is a pantry item in Korean cooking, used in marinades, sauces, tonics, and cold summer drinks. It is one of those items that is hard to find a substitute. I would list it as non-negotiable, but I know it is not the easiest to find or the cheapest pantry good. So, if you can’t find it, just eliminate it. It just adds a sweet tang. I would recommend trying it though since it is very versatile. In fact, I also call for maesil in my Korean whole fried fish.
Reduce, reuse, recycle! (But remember to hold large corporations accountable for 71% of climate change.)
Reusing marinade – Don’t let the marinade go to waste. Reuse the marinade for another batch of drug eggs! Spoon it over raw soft or silken tofu. Drizzle it over a salad. Use the marinade to braise tofu (dubu joirm), potatoes (gamja jorim), or black beans (kong jorim). In a pinch, you can also pour the marinade over my Korean whole fried fish.
Food styling tips:
Yolk porn – Capture this sequence: spoon the marinade, drizzle the sesame oil, breaki into the yolk, let the yolk run over rice and into the crevices, and then pick up the perfect bite!
Add a horizontally cut avocado. IYKYK.
Make sure all three types of alliums are in the shot. Think of the bright leek rings, the soy-stained red onions, bias-cut scallions all as a mosaic!
I want to see how you are addicted to eating your Korean drug eggs. Over avocado toast? Over soba noodles? (You could dip the noodles in the marinade.) In bibimbap? Mashed up into an egg salad sando? Substitute into hot girl salad? Wrapped up as egg in a ball?
Recipe Development Notes
Taken at 4am on my bed.
Test #1 - February 2022 – I made these on a Friday afternoon of President’s Day weekend before going out to Elsewhere in Bushwick. I came back the next morning at 4am and ate them over rice and avocado before proceeding to pass out in bed. It was the best post-dancing snack ever. The perfect amount of food to refuel and then immediately pass out in bed.
What I did right — a mix of pickled alliums makes these eggs much more fun to eat
Needs improvement — don’t add sesame oil to marinade.
Test #2 - February 2022 - Mixo, a new Asian-founded, recipe-focused video creation app, approached me to join their Creator program before their official launch. Mixo was exclusively recruiting Korean creators to create Korean food recipes. I remember reading this e-mail after coming back from a run. My initial thoughts? What an interesting concept….will this model last solely on Korean food?
But upon reading more, I realized that Mixo’s ethos–allowing Korean creators introduce Korean foods to people’s tables–aligns with my own. On my account, I’ve emphasized repeatedly that when we are looking to learn how to cook a certain culture’s foods, we should look towards and defer to those who identify with that culture. In the last few years, food media and bloggers have had to confront a pervasive cultural appropriation problem. And while the solution does lie in the hands of the perpetuators….as conscious consumers, we can easily 1) relearn who we want to identify as teachers and 2) redistribute funds through SEO as easily as clicking on recipes from those authentic teachers.
This conversation becomes more complicated when you start to dive into nuances of identity. But I find an easy answer in its most simple permutation: would you rather learn how to make kimchi from “10-minute quick pickled Korean sauerkraut” at www.whitepicketfence.com or your friend’s 78 year old Korean grandma whose folds between her fingers are permanently stained red? Because the app was launching just after the death of Christina Yuna Lee in NYC, Mixo also pledged to donate $10 to to Womankind, an NYC-based organization that serves Asian American survivors of sexual violence of all ages, for every creator who joined its initial program to recipe develop and test Beta version of the app. I signed onto creating two recipes videos with Mixo.
What I did right — I’m very grateful that Mixo offered to compensate for my grocery budget. I bought REALLY nice Vital Farms eggs and maesil plum extract, two items normally out of my normal budget. The extract added a nice zing—almost a slightly fermented alcoholic taste. The eggs were much easier to peel.
Needs improvement — I always see my grandma use maesil liberally, but I got too zealous with the extract. I need decrease the amount of extract to eliminate an overly fermented taste.
Supper club does weekday brunch.
Test #3 - April 2022 - If you’ve read through my recipes, you know that I usually need to get the validation of friends and family before I release a recipe. (Is it a praise kink? Is it my inner child craving affirmations? Is it my love language? Is it the positive reinforcement generation reared by Mr. Rogers) I made the eggs for an egg-theme brunch with my friends. They remarked my Korean drug eggs were very different from any sort of Chinese tea egg or Japanese ramen egg and agreed that they are addictive.
What I did right — After reading that adding vinegar to the boiling water can make peeling eggs easier, I tried to update my trusty jammy egg recipe. But I didn't notice a difference in the peeling process.
Needs improvement — Nothing. Recipe is ready for the camera!
mis en place? I don’t know her!
Test #4 + #5 - April 2022 - I’ve been very bad about specifically scheduling time to work on Everything Alex Cooks projects. The past year, I’ve just tried to answer emails, drop zines, post stories just whenever I’ve found the some free time–whether that be commuting on the train, between classes or in classes, or while eating lunch. I’m slowly realizing that if I do want to continue to grow my community online, then I have to allot time in my schedule just as I would allot time to catching up with friends or doing schoolwork. I scheduled to film my videos on the last Sunday in April, holding myself accounting that I would gatekeep myself from going out the night prior and set aside the whole day to do something I love. And not just doing something I love—but getting the opportunity to get paid for to do something I love! (Another big realization for me….I’ll write more about this identity crisis in my Korean whole fried fish.
That morning, I took the bus downtown with a box of all my ingredients. I had to take multiple rest stops from the bus stop to a friend’s apartment. I filmed two videos in five hours. I even got to play out a little camera magic…you know the trick where you say this step takes 4 hours but then you pull out the finished food in front of the camera 4 seconds later because you totally did not prep another batch the night before. (…ergo Test #4 + #5) Then I went home to my little dorm room and passed out. It reminded me how rewarding the creative process can be but also how I probably wouldn’t want to devote my life to creating this type of content everyday. (Another ongoing identity crisis to be continued…)
If you decide to test these eggs, please tag me @everythingalexcooks,
(and I mean actually tag me, the new IG update doesn’t notify me when I simply get mentioned in a caption).
I want to see your creations and hear your thoughts!
