Lucas Sin's Most Popular Tomato Egg Drop Recipe | Why it Works (New Series!)

normally when you hear the words egg drop you think soup not today we're kicking off my new series with one of my most well-known dishes where egg drop is a sauce today we're exploring why the egg drop technique works with my tomato egg drop first of all conceptually the tomato and egg drop is about building a saucy tomato dish because the context is rice it is not a stir fry so we're not picking we're not going to be picking up pieces of tomatoes to eat so for maximum tomato meltability we're peeling the tomatoes now I thought this was standard issue technique and it turns out some people like to peel some people like to peel their tomatoes with the peeler we're not going to be doing that today we're going to be feeling them in an old sort of like a culinary school type of way not that I went to culinary school we're drawing x's on the bottom of our tomatoes and then we're going to dunk this into hot water a couple of seconds no more than 30 for sure and then once that tomato gets dunked into ice water the peel is going to come off super easily make sense cool it is one of those little details that if you do take the links and you do put in the work to do it it just makes that tomato sauce just a little bit more delicious we've gone to the links to peel these things so we're also going to just take out the core Tomatoes we're just cutting small wedges and because we're going to be cooking the Tomato for a little bit of time they're basically going to melt so it doesn't really matter how nice your knife technique and how big your tomatoes are going to be cool second ingredient eggs most of what Americans associate with egg drop is egg drop soup and what happens is cold eggs are dropped into a hot soup so they form small tiny little ribbons those ribbons are supposed to be an imitation of the texture of the soup the soup is a little bit gelatinous it's a little bit thick because it's made with animal broth this egg drop is what in Chinese we would refer to as a blanket egg drop so we're dropping eggs into a sauce and we're letting it set just barely and using the egg drop technique to thicken the sauce in one but also to create curdles of eggs instead of the small wispy eggs that are inside of egg drop soup so the things that we're adding to this egg is number one for seasoning and number two for silkiness eggs first it's three eggs to a quarter teaspoon of salt a quarter teaspoon looks something like a generous pinch by the way by the way this is a kosher salt so it's nice and Flaky if you use table salt this will come out way too salty so eggs and the salt the salt is for the seasoning also if you'd like to know adding the salt a little bit earlier helps the eggs set a little bit so that when you actually cook them they don't get as runny as quickly it's almost like a almost like a marinade almost like a brine a little bit of white pepper which is slightly fermented for a spice Edge and then finally here is the other secret which is oil we're using neutral oil canola today adding oil to this egg drop is going to make the whole product a little bit silkier it's going to help it float a little bit and it'll just give us a easier pour because it's going to be a little bit more liquidy than if it was just eggs yolks and whiskey I'm inevitably Chinese so this is how I whisk my eggs with chopsticks um you want it to be pretty well emulsified and pretty smooth last component aromatics different people have different philosophies um the main three in all of Chinese cooking ginger garlic scallion in a stir fry I like adding Ginger because I like the flavor of Ginger I don't actually like garlic because I find it a little bit overwhelming for it and also garlic plus tomato for me is very marinara is Ish that's honestly just a stylistic difference however in a tomato and egg drop I like only scallion alliums like scallion or onion give you the basis of a sweetness and a little bit of that aromatic flavor it also is going to caramelize quite nicely when we start our stir fry keep some of those greens for garnish just to remind ourselves that we took the time to peel the tomatoes so the whole thing should look nice so now we're going to cook the tomato sauce on the topic of tomato sauce everybody's making tomato sauce sizz right now marinara and so on and so forth of tomato sauces this is quite a simple one it doesn't take a huge amount of time to cook we've already peeled them so as we're cooking we're trying to activate the aromatics we're trying to melt the tomatoes get them nice and Saucy and we'll be trying to integrate all of those flavors and season it just very very Barely There is a little bit of ketchup in there classically Chinese specifically quite Hong Kong because tomatoes taste like ketchup they're ketchups ketchup tastes like tomatoes so you add ketchupy stuff no ketchup tastes like tomatoes so you add tomatoey stuff to the tomatoes to make the tomato sauce more tomatoey that's the theory make sense so walk or a skillet actually you might be thinking to yourself you should be using a cast iron skillet or a carbon steel Wok if your Wok is not terribly well seasoned cooking Tomatoes like this that are so acidic that's going to take your seasoning off so I prefer to use something that's a little bit non-reactive stainless steel for example if you have a stainless steel Wok or a stainless steel pan that's the way to go in this case this is a non-reactive luck heat the wok up before you add the oil heat the oil up until it's shimmering by shimmering I mean when you shake the pan you should see little ripples if it's all moving as one distinct Mass it's not hot enough okay once that's there scallions go in it takes about 30 seconds for the white parts of the skin to go translucent you don't want to pick up too much brown color here not that type of sauce once you start to smell it and it smells great tomatoes go in once the tomatoes have gone in all of this is going to slowly release liquid that's the goal as the tomato sauce continues to break down now we're going to season it with salt sugar and MSG roughly very roughly the ratio we're looking at is something like two salt one sugar one MSG okay super long story so um MSU is a naturally occurring chemical that creates this sensation of savoriness or umaminess which is the fifth taste MSG is like sodium chloride AKA salt it's so so so important to all of the foods that we love the common examples are tomatoes Doritos and meat products and seafood products makes sense so the last seasoning and the secret sauce here is a Hong Kong favorite which is ketchup I mean it's been how long has it been it's like five minutes ten minutes maybe and already the sauce is breaking down significantly so we're going to add our liquid which in this case is chicken stock vegetable stock also works water also works this sauce has been brought to a boil I'm only going to give it about a minute before that flavor gets Consolidated and all those flavors start to talk to each other and it mingles so for those of you who have made tomato and egg before this is going to look way too watery but that's okay because we're going to thicken it so really quick lesson if you don't already know on starch slurries star slurries are the primary Technique we use to thicken sauces because unlike a roux we can add star slurries at the end of the cooking process so we have a little bit more control almost always on hand it's a one-to-one ratio this is a tablespoon of water to a tablespoon of cornstarch so add a little bit on the surface Stir It and let it come to a boil check it a little bit thicker the important thing is to let it heat up fully because otherwise you won't be able to track how well it's thickened in your sauce let the tomato sauce come to a boil we're going to taste it we'll check in for balance good um we're checking for balance between salt sugar and acidity from the Tomato itself that's quite good this is nice It Coats a it barely coats the back of your spoon it's a little bit thinner than the than than a fully thickened sauce so that's good oh shoot I just remembered last thing to season this with right at the end is a little bit of sesame oil I don't love adding sesame oil early in the cooking process because if you really really cook sesame oil kind of kills that nutty flavor this is just a little bit of earthiness and nuttiness to finish off the whole sauce tiny bit of sesame oil and towards the end this is like perfect sauciness that's going to thicken up just a little bit when the egg drop goes in sauce is thickened sesame oil is in there this is tasted it's sour and savory and Umami and all those things the last step is the egg so I'm gonna pour this egg mixture onto the sauce as close to the surface as possible to almost get it to float and as it sinks the eggplant is going to cook if we mix this now the egg is going to emulsify into the sauce it's going to look a little bit like vodka sauce and that's not right turn it back on to a medium to a very gentle simmer and let that egg slowly slowly slowly cook you see it slowly coming to life the egg is slowly being set don't go too hot at all this is this this is why people like shakshuko and it's the best parts of tomatoes and eggs savoriness and Umami deliciousness is a product of multiplicative amino acids tomatoes have some eggs have some when we bring it together extra flavor okay it's been about a minute of simmering we're just going to scrape the bottom just to release any egg that might have stuck to the bottom of the pan during the drop you see how gentle and how soft this egg is it's like a it's like a very fluffy French omelette level scrambled egg that has a little bit of nice fats and and liquids in there it's a perfect dish to go with rice in the perfect context we'd be eating this dish with a bunch of other dishes at home family style you might have a steam chicken you might have some steamed seafood or stir-fried veggie or some like braised meat dish and then you'd have this on the side as what in Chinese we call it so this is something that is designed for eating rice it almost increases the amount of rice that you eat because of how good the accompaniment of texture and flavor this dish to the to the Rices this is probably my go-to one person at home meal it's pretty nutritious but also even when you're cooking for yourself it's always nice to remind yourself that you care about yourself and you're going to make it look pretty with nice scallions on a bias for the written recipe just check out the description in the box below leave me a comment if you tried to make it we'd all love to know how it turns out [Music] I can eat this I can eat this right okay

Channel: Food52

Views: 307,830

Keywords: Food52, food, cooking, recipe, chef, foodie, cook, home cooking videos, recipes, lucas sin, tomato, tomato egg drop, chinese cooking, chinese food, egg drop, egg drop soup

Id: 0EaGg10RVFM

Length: 11min 36sec (696 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 27 2023