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| Hey, I'm rusty ok?? |
1. Place a dozen eggs into a medium-sized pot of cold water (water should be cold so eggs don't crack because you'll likely have pulled them straight from the fridge. I learned this the hard way once when I tried to save time by setting the water on the stove before I went to pull out the eggs along with the other ingredients. Being efficient me, I decided to do as much prep work as I could in the time it would take the water to boil because I hear it boils faster when you don't watch it. When the water was at a nice bubbly boil, I dropped the cold eggs in and the cracking ensued. I got poached eggs layered in shell instead of hard boiled eggs. It wasn't a complete failure but I didn't cook the eggs as the recipe called for.)
2. You can put the cover on the pot if you're in a hurry for the eggs to boil. However, if you have a garden, you can water the plants while you wait for the eggs to cook. I watered half our yard before I returned to the eggs.
3. Once you return from the garden, the eggs should be cooked. Turn the heat off and let eggs sit on the stove in the hot water for a bit. The pot needs to cool down a little before you handle it (about 5 mins).
4. Carefully pour the hot water in the sink and refill the pot (with eggs still in it) with cold water. Now let the eggs sit in the cold bath and go prepare the next part of your recipe. For me, it was washing and chopping scallions for the banh bao stuffing. I was told to cut the onions in small pieces so I took my time and chopped them finely. During onion chopping, mom walked in and asked why I was chopping them so finely. Answer: the easier to hide it in the meat so TT doesn't realize how much onion she's eating in each bite.
5. Once onions are chopped, return to the eggs and dip your finger in the water. If it's still warm, empty that water and refill with cold water. Let sit while you unload the dishwasher or cut white printer paper (wax cookie sheets are preferred but we never bake so we never have that in the house) into squares onto which the uncooked banh bao can be placed.
6. By now, the eggs should be cool enough to handle. Break the egg shell by tapping the egg on the counter and rotating so the cracks are distributed evenly around the equator of the egg. Peel over a trash can so you don't have to clean up the shell afterward. If you happen to drop your egg into the trash can, don't pick it up. Just continue peeling the rest of the eggs over a clean plastic bag that you can toss later. If you drop it in the plastic bag, you can rinse the shell pieces off under running water and place the clean egg with the rest of the batch:
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| Voila, perfectly boiled and peeled eggs |
I heard from Paula Dean (and later, mom) that the shell comes off better after the eggs have cooled in a cold water bath. The image above is proof that they are right.
The rest of these images depict the scene in the kitchen during banh bao prepping and cooking:
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| Quartered eggs waiting to be placed in the meat cushion and wrapped up in a stretchy piece of rolled out dough |
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| Clockwise from top: I think it's ground pork meat stuffing with peas and carrots, quartered eggs, whole eggs, dough, mom's hand is a blur. Center: loose flour |
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| Uncooked banh bao |
