How to make Egg Bistik, or Telur Bistik, a Malaysian egg dish of omelette slathered with a meaty, tangy, sweet and slightly spicy gravy.

Egg Bistik, or Telur Bistik, is a Malaysian egg dish of omelette slathered with a meaty, tangy, sweet and slightly spicy gravy.

This is actually not a common fixture in the Singapore hawker scene, but it is very prevalent in Malaysia. It’s one of those must-order zi char hawker dishes when in Malaysia, think of it as Sambal Kangkong. I would say the Singapore equivalent of Egg Bistik is Egg Tofu Hotplate – although I have to add this dish is a common zi char dish in Malaysia as well.

A closer relative to this dish would be Egg Foo Yong with gravy, which is more of an American-Chinese dish. You can’t find Egg Foo Yong with gravy here at all.

Anyway, Egg Bistik is so incredibly easy to make! I love that this dish has both proteins and vegetables.

What the heck is “Bistik”?

if you’re wondering what the heck ‘bistik’ is, it’s simply the mispronunciation of ‘beef steak’ and then it just became the linguistic norm for Malays and correct me if I’m wrong, for Indonesians too.

‘Bistik’ does not refer to steak, as we generally know it. It’s used to refer to beef, and even more specifically, to ground beef or cubed beef. It’s confusing, I know.

While it can be used to refer to steak, it very rarely is. Steak would simply be referred to as ‘stik’ or ‘daging, which translates directly to meat.

In this recipe, I used cubed chicken as well as ground beef. I want to say the chicken is optional, but most restaurant versions would include chicken as an ingredient.

The Trio of Sauces

With Egg Bistik, the sauce is a combination of sweet, tangy and slightly spicy (depending on which sauce you used).

Oyster Sauce: For the savoury umami-ness.

Tomato Ketchup: For the tangy sweetness.

Sweet Chilli Sauce: Most standard chilli sauces available here in Singapore and Malaysia are your sweet variety. They are only very slightly spicy! Try to find Thai Sweet Chilli Sauces, which are also similar. You can also use sriracha, although bear in mind sriracha tends to be spicy! Sriracha are usually not sweet either, so I recommend adding a teaspoon of sugar to balance out the flavours.

That’s really all you need to create the sauce. Since these sauces are quite thick by nature, your sauce will be thickened too. There is no need for you to add cornstarch slurry, unless you’ve added too much water. I do not recommend adding too much water since the flavours might get too watered down.

What Type of Vegetables to Use for Egg Bistik?

The restaurants and eateries typically use those frozen bags of mixed vegetables consisting of corn, carrots and peas. I *hate* those bags so I would much rather say you can use pretty much any vegetable of choice. It would taste better AND be more nutritious. Win. The “harder”, cruciferous vegetables would fare better than the leafy ones.

In this recipe, I used carrots, cauliflower and green beans. Dice them into bite sized pieces – basically you want them closest in size to the ground beef, so that when you scoop it up with a spoon, you get a little bit of everything.

Other vegetables that you can use include corn, broccoli, peas, capsicums or bell peppers.

What to Serve Egg Bistik With?

This is so good when served with some hot rice. Imagine a bowl of rice, topped with a meaty omelette and slathered with that delicious sauce.

Since it has both proteins and vegetables in it, it’s one of those cheat dishes that you can scam kids – or stubborn adults – to eat more veggies!

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