The Porous Egg

In the beginning we used to smoke eggs.  We had a smoker where we could set its temperature and then smoke ingredients at that temperature for any period of time.  We worked on smoking eggs.  The flavor was good, though we wanted a bit more smoke in our eggs.  We served it in a warm black truffle broth with bacon lardons and a clear cloche to capture aromas and allow diners to see and anticipate what was about to be uncovered.

Playing with different times and temperatures in the smoker yielded a variety of results.  Smoked egg salad is tasty, even if it is not the anticipated end result.  After we ran through an array of ideas with smoked eggs we put the idea back on the shelf.

After a recent meal the smoked egg memories were evoked.  Questions emerged.  We know that egg shells are porous and will absorb flavors.  Our previous smoked eggs and the proven technique of storing truffles with eggs to infuse them with their flavor may have been the initial spark.  Why stop there?  What if we could infuse eggs with smoke without putting them in the smoker?  That would be quite clever.  It turns out that we can.  We took raw eggs in their shells and rubbed them with hickory smoke powder from Terra Spice.  We let the eggs infuse for twelve hours and the results produced a faintly smoky flavor on the egg.  We believe another twelve hours of infusion will produce the balanced smoke flavor we are looking for.  The next experiment will be to to make a paste with the smoke powder and water and apply that to the egg shell for complete coverage and more rapid infusion.

If the infusion works with smoke what other essences and infusions will emerge?  Fresh herbs and citrus zests and juices, jalapenos and vanilla beans, cinnamon and szechuan peppercorns, ground chiles and evaporated tequila.  Freeze dried powders could be a great resource here as well as kasu and miso.  The variety of options they provide are almost endless. The aromas will be captured by the egg, which can be served simply, without the inclusion of the ingredient in the egg itself.  And if an infusion works, what about soaking eggs in brines.  Can we make bacon  broth and soak eggs in it?  Will we then have bacon in eggs?  Imagine the possibilities.

Comments

[john]

Bacon IN eggs! you are two are amazing! Like the butter on my bread!

[Pong Sirioput]

On the Food Hacking wiki, there's a page about using vodka to "volatize flavor" for this type of infusion.

http://wiki.foodhacking.com/index.php?title=Flavored_egg_hacks

These articles might also help:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand_year_egg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_egg

[JD]

Are you hard-boiling the eggs before you infuse them? Reminds me of Chinese Tea Eggs.

[Mark]

excellent work, I thought of this idea for an ouefs a la niege dish. eggs marinated in espresso, then poach the marinated whites in coffee or espresso. I haven't actually tried it yet. Some of the people I work with thought it was a ridiculous idea. Maybe ground coffee beans would work better.

[Al]

I've played around with flavored brines for eggs: sort of a variation of chinese salted duck eggs. Bacon brine works nicely, as well as star anise. Also did a smoked paprika brine: sort of an in-shell deviled egg. :)

[Brooke]

Sounds tasty. Love your blog.

[Arthur]

What about doing a confit and just rubbing the eggs with the fat rendered from previously fried bacon?

[Kevin Sousa]

i love the idea of infusing eggs. We have done it with pickled beet juice at 63.8 c in the gastrovac, producing a perfectly soft cooked pickled egg. we are going to try "smoking" eggs tonight using a similar method with a hickory smoke distillate. thanks again for the inspiration.

[dan]

Hi guys,

the link to your old experiments with smoking eggsi broken........

I too have tried smoking eggs. In our hot smoker and failed to detect any smokiness in the resultant eggs. I'd be keen to get this right but would feel much happier not using a dry rub.

My eggs here: http://www.saltandwoodsmoke.com/?p=113

[McAuliflower]

I believe there is a science experiment that soaks whole eggs in vinegar to break down the shell so that it seems to have almost dissolved.

Perhaps that would make it more penetrable by the smoke.

[Matt Hooper]

Hi food gods!
I have been messing aroung with the egg thing after seeing this, fantastic idea\method, thanks!
For the smoked flavor, since I live in Bermuda and a lot of luxury ingredients don't exist here, I disloved loads of smoked salt in water and did a 48 hr egg submersion in it. The result was kind of disappointing, althought the liquid was very smokey, it didn't really get through to the egg, after round 2, and a 96 hr soak, still a little disappointing. Maybe liquid smoke? Has anyone tried this? The smoke that was there was in the yolk as suggested it would be.
But since then I have started to wounder, after putting a little truffle oil in a bag and extracting the air, after 48 hrs I had a very Truffe flavored egg, after 96 hr effort, even more so.
Again, as suggested in the Blog, it was the Yolk that seemed to absorb the flavor!
............ now I ask the scientists amoungst you, is an egg yolk more adapt at absorbing oil based things than water based? Smoke in water was weak, but the truffle in oil was strong, should we be infusing the eggs with infused oils?
I think the yolk is more adapt to the oil, not sure why and have only tried this with 2 ingredients. Would love to hear of others results.
Thanks!
Keep bringing the great ideas to the public!

[Matt Hooper]

By the way, to cook, I fried the eggs. Would this make a difference?