This is the sauciest, creamiest and easiest Salted Egg Yolk Chicken you will ever make!
Salted Egg Yolk Chicken is a beloved Singapore and Malaysian zi char restaurant/hawker dish of fried chicken bites slathered in a creamy, sweet and savoury salted egg yolk sauce. This is also so incredibly easy to make at home. I used chicken here, but this recipe works with squid and prawns as well. I made a Salted Egg Yolk Calamari a while back, and this recipe is even easier to make!
What are Salted Egg Yolks?
Salted eggs are one of those special Asian ingredients. It may not be essential, but every household would have these at some point. These are the yolks of salted eggs, typically duck eggs. They’re cured in salt over a period of time so it’s salty. When you buy the salted eggs from the supermarket, there’s usually a layer of black soil that you would need to rinse off. Once it’s cleaned out, crack the eggs and separate the whites from the yolks. You can actually eat the whites as well, though most people would just use the yolks as an ingredient.
These days, or at least in Southeast Asian supermarkets, you can purchase these salted egg yolks, readily peeled and separated from the whites.
How to Cook Salted Egg Yolks?
Before using the salted egg yolks, they will need to be cooked first. In this recipe, I steamed the yolks. There are a couple of ways to cook the yolks including:
- Boiling
- Roasting in the oven
- Microwaving (which is low-key my lazy day fave but the yolks will EXPLODE, so make sure you cover up the container)
Steaming the yolks would be my preferred way of cooking it since it is a lot more consistent to producing cooked, soft yolks. Simply steam on high for 10 to 15 minutes until the yolks cook, or when it turns into an opaque, paler yellow.
Mash the yolks before using so it blends well into the cream. I’ve seen people use food processors to get a finer mash, which you can try if you’re after the smoothest sauce.
Making the EASIEST Crispy Fried Chicken Bites
I made Salted Egg Yolk Calamari here. In that recipe, I coated the calamari in a seasoned, egg and flour dredge. It’s great, but messy. I tried this ultra simple method one day – and I never looked back!
All I did was season the chicken cubes with salt and pepper, and enough cornstarch to coat. This yielded crispy chicken! Since you’re going to coat this in salted egg yolk sauce, it even makes the most sense to keep it simple so the sauce can shine.
Another hack I tried with this was to shallow fry the chicken! If I can shallow fry everything, and save oil, I would. Of course, if you’d rather deep fry the chicken and let it cook, that works too.
Ingredients for the Salted Egg Yolk Chicken Sauce
The ingredients in Salted Egg Yolk Chicken are minimal, and all lend to the flavours that we are accustomed to expect when ordering this at zi char restaurants.
Butter: This adds such a buttery creamy flavour to the dish. You can also replace with oil.
Garlic: No onions or scallions are used in this dish – just garlic! Add according to your preference.
Curry Leaves: This would be the most unmissable ingredient. Curry Leaves add that extra signature something something to the dish. Unfortunately there’s really no replacement for curry leaves, so try to source it out. They’re very easily available at Singapore supermarkets – I grow them! Otherwise it’s easily available on Amazon as well.
Bird’s Eye Chillies: This add a spicy kick to the sauce, and helps to cut the heaviness of the salted egg yolk sauce. If you don’t take spice, you can omit this ingredient.
Evaporated Milk: I used canned evaporated milk, since that is what zi char restaurants use. You can easily replace this with regular milk, or even low fat milk to the exact same results! This is a CREAMY salted egg yolk chicken, so I added quite a lot of milk. If you want a coating of sauce, then simply half the amount.
Why is my Salted Egg Yolk Chicken so thick?
This is just the nature of salted egg yolk dishes! You would realise that most salted egg yolk dishes in restaurants are not very saucy at all. Salted egg yolk sauces thicken as it cools. Salted egg yolk itself is a thickening ingredient when combined with milk.
I would not recommend adding more liquid to create a saucy dish – you will most likely end up with a gloopy mess.
Some eateries do offer a more liquid, saucy version. Often than not these are made using artificial, instant salted egg yolk mixes. If you have this easily available then use it! It works in this recipe as well; add the instant salted egg yolk mix instead of adding mashed yolks.
More recipes like this:
Singapore Salted Egg Yolk Chicken
Course: Recipes2-3
servings10
minutes20
minutesIngredients
300g Chicken, cubed
1/4 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp White Pepper
3 tbsps Cornstarch, or enough to coat
1/2 cup Cooking oil
- Sauce
4 Salted Egg Yolks, steamed and mashed
2 tbsps Butter
2 cloves Garlic, minced
2 stalks of Curry Leaves
1-2 stalks of Thai Bird’s Eye Chilis or Cili Padi, minced
1 cup of Evaporated Milk (or Milk)
1 tbsp of Condensed Milk (or Sugar)
Salt, to taste (optional)
Directions
- Steaming the Salted Egg Yolk
- Steam the egg yolks on high for 10 to 15 minutes, or until the yolks cook. It will turn a paler yellow and more opaque.
- Mash the cooked yolks with a fork finely.
- Shallow Frying Chicken
- To the chicken, season with salt and pepper. Toss through to combine.
- Add the cornstarch and toss through to coat the chicken pieces with the cornstarch evenly.
- Add enough oil to a pan to shallow fry the chicken pieces. Allow to heat at a medium heat.
- Once oil is hot, add the chicken pieces. Evenly spread across the pan and allow the bottom to cook and crisp up. Flip the chicken pieces over to the other side to finish cooking.
- Once chicken is golden brown and crispy throughout, take off the pan and keep to one side.
- Making the sauce
- Add butter to a pan, and allow to melt over low heat.
- Once the butter melts, add garlic, curry leaves and bird’s eye chillies. Saute until fragrant.
- Add mashed salted egg yolks and stir to combine with the butter. The salted egg yolks should begin to foam as it combines with the butter.
- Once you have a combined sauce, add evaporated milk and condensed milk. Option to add salt if needed – you should not need to since salted yolks have enough salt. Stir to combine and allow sauce to come to a boil.
- Once it boils, add back the fried chicken and toss through to combine.
Leave a Reply