Korean Marinated "Drug" Eggs and What to Do With Them

Lunch prep made good

First, there are a lot of new faces around here thanks to a story I published earlier in the week that gone gangbusters (at least for a small publication like this one).

Learning to Cook Isn’t Just a Life Skill Anymore. It’s a Rebellion Against Our Failing Food Systems

Welcome!

For the newbies and as a reminder to old-timers, my name is Charlie. For nearly eight years I owned a wine store and bar in the UK which — humble brag alert—was once given an award as the best independent wine retailer in the country. I sold it a few years ago to travel and write, which I do frequently both on Medium and here at Substack.

The Sauce is a twice-weekly publication dedicated to all things food and drink. During the week I send out essays on anything from the rise of fake fancy restaurants to why wine etiquette rules are complete nonsense.

Friday (or sometimes Saturday) is recipe day. My recipes are based on a “capsule pantry” approach. A small number of ingredients that can be used in myriad ways. I’m a big fan of little-waste so if a recipe calls for an ingredient, I’ll tell you how to use it in other recipes. Or how to use the leftovers. Or how to adapt it to fit what you already have in your pantry. There’s a whole archive of these recipes to look through.

This being Substack, I offer both free and paid membership tiers.

The free tier gets a recipe a month and some of the essays. Paid members get access to everything in The Sauce archive as well as discounts on my remote wine consultation service SommAnywhere.

Founding members get it all plus a free remote wine consultation which can either be for you or gifted to someone else.

Onto our scheduled programming.

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Lunch you can prep once and eat all week? Banging Korean flavours to wake you up? Eggs that are so addictive they’re nicknamed drug eggs?

This is the sort of cooking that calls to me.

These are called Mayak Gyeran eggs, otherwise known as Korean drug eggs.

Korean drug eggs are boiled until the yolk sets into that jamminess every ramen obsessive loves to post on Instagram.

They are then marinaded in a ridiculously punchy soy sauce dressing which you can adapt to your personal preferences and what’s in your cupboard (check out the variations section below).

Stick them in the fridge then use them in hundreds of different ways (again, the variations section below is your friend) and stuff them in your face over and over.

One way I like to use the eggs is in a sushi bowl. Sushi rice on the bottom, eggs and accoutrements on top, all covered with the egg marinade. Recipe incoming…

Mayak eggs with edamame, kimchi and sushi rice

The Mayak eggs

The trick for jammy yolks is to boil eggs for a very specific time and get them into cold water right away. I’ve experimented with countless timings and I’ve got it juuuuust so.

With regards to the marinade, you can play about with the ratios of ingredients. More chilli. Less garlic. Oodles more sesame seeds. What I suggest in the recipe below is exactly that — a suggestion.

Sushi rice tips

There are a few tricks to make sushi rice successfully. You want individual grains, not a soggy mess.

First, wash the rice thoroughly until the water runs nearly clear. I do this by adding it to a bowl, covering it with water and swirling the rice around until the water turns milky. Rinse through with a sieve and repeat. It’ll take 3-4 rounds to get the water almost clear.

Second, soak the rice for 20-30 minutes.

If you do both these steps, the golden ratio for rice to water is 1:1.2. That’s 20% more water than rice.

If the rice has soaked up the water and is still chalky, you can add some more a little sprinkle at a time.

Sushi rice calls for mixing sugar, salt and rice vinegar into the cooked rice. I skip this step because whilst that works well for sushi, I don’t think it’s required for these rice bowls.

Of course, you don’t have to use sushi rice if you don’t have it in your cupboard. This is The Capsule Pantry, the point is to adapt the recipe to whatever you have to hand. Long grain like basmati or jasmine work great, as does Thai sticky rice.

You do you.

Korean Drug Eggs

Makes 4. Scale up for more