Century Egg - Modernist Cuisine

Has anyone tried successfully to make the century eggs from MC? I followed the recipe precisely except that I used chicken eggs. After the 5 days of air-drying, the (uncooked) eggs were still raw, and cooking yield what looked like a normal cooked egg. I used food-grade lye micro beads, which I've used successfully in the past for bagel and pretzel making.

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grant

I have seen it made, I would have to see the recipe that you used as the versions might have changed in publications/editions. Johnny developed that at MC and it worked great, although 5 days seams rather quick if my memory serves me correctly.

ajcampelli

Thanks Grant. I used the recipe printed in the first edition of MC, which called for 20 days of soaking in a salt (9%) and lye (4.2%) solution, followed by 2 days in fresh water, and then 5 days of air drying. To be fair, I didn't vacuum seal the eggs with the brine; I simply put them in a Ziploc bag with the brine, and used the displacement method to remove as much air as possible.

Chris_Young_80640

The vacuum sealing shouldn't really make a difference. Do you have any photos of what you did get. If you soaked it for 20 days, I'm really surprised it didn't work.

ajcampelli

Thanks Chris. Unfortunately I don't have any photos, though the end product was indistinguishable from a fresh egg. I plan on trying again this weekend - I'll report back in a month with the next set of results.