You Should Be Marinating Your Eggs In Soy Sauce. Here's Why

Have you ever eaten a bowl of ramen and wondered what that brown-colored egg, sliced in half and sitting on top of the noodles yolk side up, was? That egg is a Japanese-style soy sauce egg called shoyu tamago (via The Spruce Eats). Soy sauce eggs are made by soft- or hard-boiling eggs till you get a jammy yolk that is both soft and runny but set at the same time. Soft-boiled eggs are then peeled and soaked in a marinade of soy sauce.

According to My Recipes, marinating your eggs in soy sauce is a game-changer, especially because it's so easy to do at home. Soy sauce eggs have a savory and salty flavor from being marinated in soy sauce and any other spices that you add to the marinade. Adding a soy sauce egg will instantly make your two-minute store-bought packet of ramen a whole lot tastier. You could also use them to upgrade any salads, one-bowl meals, eggs on toast, and noodle dishes, or eat them plain for a quick and filling snack.

To make a basic soy sauce egg, The Spruce Eats suggests that you really only need two ingredients: eggs and soy sauce. The website says to boil some soy sauce, take it off the heat, and then add peeled hard-boiled eggs to it. Make sure that the eggs are fully coated in soy sauce, and then steep them — for a minute or two if you wanted light brown colored eggs with a mildly salty flavor, and for five minutes if you want them darker and saltier.

While this is the simplest way to make soy sauce eggs, you could also add a few more ingredients for a punchier flavor. Along with soy sauce, you could also add a bit of brown sugar, rice vinegar, dried chilies, and star anise to the marinade (via Omnivore's Cookbook). Nor do you have to stop there. Once you've nailed the basic recipe, you can keep tweaking the boil time of your eggs, the ingredients you add to the soy sauce marinade, and the amount of time you soak your eggs in it.

My Recipes also suggests cracking the boiled egg, but leaving it unpeeled when you soak it in soy sauce. When you do peel the egg after it has been soaked, you'll find a beautiful marble pattern on it.