Egg Foo Yong

Method

1. Make the gravy first and keep it warm. Whisk the stock, soy sauce, oyster sauce, Shaoxing wine, cornflour, sesame oil and white pepper in a small pan, bring to a simmer stirring, and cook 1 minute until it thickens and turns glossy. Take it off the heat. It will thicken further as it sits, so loosen it with a splash of stock later if needed.
2. Prepare the filling. If using raw prawns or pork, toss them with the cornflour, soy sauce and a pinch of the salt. Cooked proteins such as char siu or leftover chicken need no treatment.
3. Cook the raw protein briefly. In a hot pan with a little oil, sear the prawns or pork for about 1 minute, just until barely done, and tip onto a plate to cool a moment. Raw protein folded into the egg makes the patties weep water and refuse to set.
4. Beat the eggs with the salt and white pepper, then fold in the bean sprouts, scallions and cooled protein. Do not overbeat; you want the mixture loose, not aerated.
5. Get the oil properly hot. Heat about 3 tablespoons of oil in a 24 cm skillet over medium-high until it shimmers. This is a shallow fry, not an omelette. Too little oil is the single reason home versions come out pale and flat.
6. Fry one patty at a time. Ladle in about three quarters of a cup of mixture in one go and let it sit undisturbed for about 90 seconds, until the edges ruffle and go lacy and deep brown. Flip once and give it another 60 to 90 seconds. Drain briefly on paper.
7. Add oil between patties and let it come back to temperature each time. Serve the patties on rice with the warm gravy poured over.

Variations

The patty base and the gravy stay the same. Roughly 120 g of raw protein or 200 g of cooked per batch.

• Vegetable or mushroom foo yong. No protein. Add 100 g finely sliced mushrooms browned dry first, plus shredded cabbage or grated carrot. Use vegetarian oyster sauce in the gravy.
• Chicken, beef or BBQ pork foo yong. 200 g cooked and finely chopped. Char siu is the classic and needs no cooking at all, just fold it in.
• Shrimp foo yong. 120 g raw prawns, chopped small and seared for a minute first. The most popular version on most menus.
• House special foo yong. A mix of prawn, chicken and char siu, about 70 g of each.

Notes

• The gravy makes the dish. Patties alone are just an omelette. Make it first, because trying to make gravy while patties sit going cold is how this goes wrong.
• Foo yong is spelled a dozen ways on menus, foo young and fu yung among them. It descends from a Cantonese egg dish and became a fixture of Chinese-American and Chinese-Canadian restaurants.
• Bean sprouts are structural, not a garnish. They are what keeps the inside of a thick patty from being solid rubbery egg, and there should be nearly as much sprout as egg by volume.
• Cook one at a time and resist crowding. Two patties in one pan run into each other and neither gets an edge.
• Leftover patties reheat acceptably in a dry pan. The gravy keeps 3 days and thickens in the fridge.

Ingredient substitutions

• Oyster sauce substitutes with vegetarian mushroom oyster-style sauce, widely sold in Germany and Canada, for a slightly lighter gravy.
• Bean sprouts are best fresh, but tinned drained ones work at a push; rinse and dry them well. Finely shredded cabbage is the better fresh substitute if sprouts are unavailable.
• Shaoxing wine substitutes as elsewhere on this shelf, dry sherry being closest.

Sources consulted

• RecipeTin Eats: Egg Foo Young
• The Woks of Life: Egg Foo Young

Good with

• Chinese Fried Rice
• Chop Suey

From Christoph Mayer