If somebody had been to review the colour palette of my food plan, they’d discover quite a lot of beige and yellow, and a lot of the yellow can be from butter and egg yolks. I eat quite a lot of each, typically on the similar time, which is why it’s shocking it took me this lengthy to make egg yolk butter. Or, extra particularly, soy-cured egg yolk butter.
Combining salty, ever-so-slightly thickened yolks with creamy butter makes a kind of “uncooked,” spreadable hollandaise with a consistency someplace between deviled egg filling and frosting. However as an alternative of the lemony, acidic notes that you simply discover in hollandaise, you get a cool, savory word, courtesy of a soy sauce soak. It’s a spreadable umami bomb that brings the flavour of buttered toast dipped within the golden middle of a sunny-side-up egg, however its functions prolong far past breakfast.
What’s soy-curing?
Curing an egg in soy sauce is a clutch transfer unto itself. We’ve talked about it earlier than, however simply to refresh your reminiscence, let’s shortly revisit the way it works:
Soy-sauce curing is fairly much like dry curing, solely the salt is dissolved in a liquid (soy sauce) as an alternative of in its crystalline type. That doesn’t matter an entire lot, nonetheless, as a result of osmosis happens both means. A better focus of the solute (salt) on one aspect of a semi-permeable membrane (the vitteline membrane, on this case) causes the solvent (water) to circulation towards the area with the next focus of the solute, in an try to equalize the concentrations on all sides of the membrane.
The water flows out of the yolk, concentrating its taste and giving it a firmer texture. After 4 hours, you’re left with a yolk that’s agency on the edges and liquid-y within the middle, with a salted, savory, barely funky taste.
Easy methods to make soy-cured egg yolk butter
This compound butter has three components, and so they’re all within the title. Seize some soy sauce, pour it in a small bowl, and slip 4 yolks into that bowl. Allow them to hang around for 4 hours within the fridge, them fish ‘em out and mix them with a stick of room temperature butter in a meals processor.
The blades of the meals processor emulsify and calmly aerate the 2 wealthy and salty components, turning them right into a fluffy, frosting-like unfold that melts gorgeously. When chilled, it as soon as once more reminds of deviled egg filling, however when unfold on a scorching piece of toast, the outcomes resemble buttered toast that’s been dipped in yolk, for those who had been able to dipping the entire thing right into a pool of yolk all of sudden. (Such is the character of spreading versus dipping.)
Easy methods to use soy-cured egg yolk butter
Toast is apparent, however nonetheless price mentioning as a result of additionally it is scrumptious. This butter would additionally make an ideal breakfast sandwich unfold, however once more, that’s fairly apparent. When you’ve made soy-cured yolks earlier than, melting it right into a bowl of scorching white rice can also be apparent, however additionally it is scrumptious, particularly for those who season it with somewhat furikake. Inexperienced greens, equivalent to broccoli or asparagus, are one other good candidate, as is something you’d eat with hollandaise sauce. The southerner in me should advocate mixing it into grits. Additionally: Don’t overthink it. It’s good at room temperature, unfold on a easy slice of baguette (or as a part of a butter flight).
Soy-cured egg yolk butter
Substances:
- 1/4 cup soy sauce
- 4 egg yolks
- 1 stick of room temperature butter (salted or unsalted), lower into 8 items
Add the soy sauce to a small bowl. You need the bowl to be simply large enough to carry 4 yolks with out crowding them. Slip the yolks into the soy sauce, then cowl with a paper towel, letting the towel turn out to be saturated with soy sauce. Set within the fridge for 4 hours.
Gently switch the yolks to the bowl of your meals processor, together with the butter. Pulse and mix till clean and fluffy, pausing each every now and then to scrape down the perimeters of the bowl. Serve instantly, or retailer within the fridge, the place it is going to maintain for not less than every week (most likely extra; there’s quite a lot of salt and fats in there).
