Susan Jung’s recipe for salted Scotch quail eggs

Serving something to eat with drinks is a pleasant way to start a dinner party. You want the dish to be fairly light, so your guests won’t spoil their appetites, and it should be easy to eat, especially if they’re standing around with a glass in one hand. This dish fits the bill.

I’ll admit it’s a bit of a pain, because it involves first salting quail eggs (which is easy, but takes time – prepare them at least three weeks in advance), then boiling and peeling them (this part is maddening, because they don’t peel easily or cleanly). It does, however, make an impressive hors d’oeuvre for a small dinner party (you don’t want to make it for a large dinner party, because of the aforementioned nuisance of peeling).

Salted Scotch quail eggs

My idea for this dish was to make the popular Cantonese dish of haam daan ju yuk beng – salted egg with steamed minced pork – but in a different form. Making it took longer than expected for practical reasons: while it’s easy to buy salted duck eggs, you have to make salted quail eggs yourself.

You’d think that because of their small size, salting the quail eggs would be fairly quick, but it takes about three weeks, sometimes longer, for them to absorb a sufficient amount of salt. My mother taught me that when making salted duck eggs, you know when they’re ready because the eggs, which become heavy with salt, sink to the bottom of the jar. It doesn’t work the same way with quail eggs; I left mine for about five weeks and they still didn’t sink.

For the salted eggs:
150 grams fine sea salt
30 grams granulated sugar
600ml water
30 quail eggs