Soy Sauce Eggs
Jammy soft-boiled eggs in a soy-mirin bath: the fridge component that finishes rice bowls, noodles, and bentos.
- Prep
- 10 min, plus 8+ hours marinating
- Cook
- 10 min
- Serves
- 4 eggs
- Difficulty
- easy
A classic Japanese ajitsuke tamago method compiled from common home and ramen-egg recipes. Pull eggs from the marinade before they get too salty.
味付け玉子 (ajitsuke tamago), also called 味玉 (ajitama), are soft-boiled eggs soaked in a salty-sweet soy bath until the whites turn amber and the yolks stay jammy. They show up halved on ramen, tucked into bentos, and sliced over leftover rice when dinner needs one more thing.
Chinese tea eggs (cracked in the shell with tea and spice) and Korean mayak eggs (garlic-chili sesame punch over rice) are cousins. This recipe is the simpler Japanese fridge egg: precise boil, ice bath, soy and mirin, wait.
Ingredients
- 4 large eggs, cold from the fridge
- ¼ cup soy sauce (Japanese-style shoyu or a clean all-purpose soy)
- ¼ cup mirin
- ¼ cup sake, or water if you are skipping sake
- 1 tsp sugar
- Ice and water, for the ice bath
Method
- 1Make the marinade first so it can cool. In a small saucepan, combine the soy sauce, mirin, sake or water, and sugar. Bring to a boil, then simmer 1 minute. Turn off the heat and cool completely.
- 2Bring a saucepan of water to a rolling boil, deep enough to cover the eggs by about an inch. Gently lower in the cold eggs one at a time. When the first egg goes in, start a timer for 7 minutes for a jammy yolk that still holds when halved (use 6½ minutes if you want it softer). Keep the water at a gentle simmer so the eggs do not thrash and crack.
- 3While the eggs cook, fill a bowl with ice and water. When the timer ends, move the eggs straight into the ice bath. Chill 10–15 minutes so the yolks stop cooking and the shells loosen.
- 4Crack each egg at the wide end and peel under cool water. Slightly older eggs usually peel more cleanly than very fresh ones.
- 5Put the peeled eggs in a zip bag or a small container. Add the cooled marinade. Press out air from a bag, or weight the eggs in a container, so they stay submerged. Refrigerate 8–12 hours (4 hours minimum).
- 6Remove the eggs from the marinade once they are seasoned to your taste, usually by 12–24 hours. Store them in a clean sealed container in the fridge. Halve and serve over rice, noodles, curry, or in a bento.
Notes
Useful details
- The boil sets the yolk; the marinade mainly seasons the white. Do not leave soft eggs in a strong bath for days hoping for more flavor.
- No mirin: replace the ¼ cup mirin with ¼ cup water mixed with 4 tsp sugar (or ¼ cup sake mixed with 4 tsp sugar if you have sake but no mirin).
- A bag uses less marinade than a jar. Either works if the eggs stay covered.
- Eat soft-boiled soy eggs within 3–4 days. Do not reuse the marinade on a new batch of peeled eggs.
- Leftover marinade can be simmered briefly and used soon as a seasoning for stir-fried vegetables or a splash in noodle sauce, then discarded.