Steamed Egg Custard [蒸水蛋]

Steamed egg custard is a classic Chinese dish. It is a very simple dish yet it's loved by adults and kids alike. However, to make a silky-smooth egg custard does require some techniques.  There're several different approaches to achieve this texture. Here is one of those which I've tried and it works really well.

Ingredients:

3 large eggs

250ml water (1 cup)

1.5 tsp soy sauce

a pinch of salt

1. Boil ample of water in a large pot in high heat.
2. Mix water, soy sauce and salt together. Beat the mixture with eggs lightly. Skim the foams on the surface.
3. Put the egg mixture in the pot when the water is boiling. Cover the container with a lid (you can use a plate which is slightly larger than the container)
4. Steam it in high heat for 3 min. Turn off the heat and let the residual heat continue to cook for 9 min.

Note:

1. Use ample of water such that the residual heat can last long enough to continue cooking the egg custard.
2. Covering the egg custard with a lid can keep the surface of the custard smooth.
3. Adjust the saltiness yourself. 1 Tbsp of my organic soy sauce contains about 850mg of sodium. For kids' dishes, I usually lightly salt it.
4. The rule of thumb of the eggs and water ratio is 1 egg to 1.5 part of water. If you use more or less of eggs, you may measure the amount of water with a measuring cup.
5. The cooking time here is for your reference. I understand sometimes my 'high heat' could be slightly different than yours, or my container could be a bit wider or narrower than yours.
6. There're many dishes that use steamed egg custard as the base. If we can master this basic dish well, we can come up with other similar dishes easier.
7. Hope you'll have a wonderful time cooking! I read a couple of books and websites, and used more than 2 dozens of eggs to do trials and errors to finally come up with this recipes. The whole process was indeed quite fun and interesting ^_^