There’s a cure for that

The recent trends of pickling and home curing have revived interest in old methods and recipes. One of these everything-old-is-new-again methods is a favorite of Sydney chef Ben Sears: curing egg yolks. “It’s salty, a little bit sweet, a little bit more complex,” he says. Sears shaves cured egg yolks over his bibimbap. “You get a different depth of flavour from just putting an egg yolk on something.”

The basic curing process involves combining raw egg yolks with salt (and sometimes sugar) and refrigerating the yolks on a bed of salt for several days. Although this results in a flavorful product on its own, you can add herbs or spices to the cure to add interesting flavor notes. Chef Sears explains: “If you want to put some pepper and stuff through the cure it’ll come up because eggs absorb flavours so well,” he says. “You could put some Korean chilli powder through the cure and it’ll pick up a little bit of the heat.”

Chef Mary Dumont of the Boston restaurant Harvest offers a step-by-step tutorial on the egg yolk curing process. The basic cure is simple and involves no specialized equipment, just a container, salt, egg yolks, and a refrigerator. Chef Dumont suggests using an oven or dehydrator to dry the cured product, while others recommend hanging the cured eggs in cheesecloth to dry. Chef Dumont grates the dried yolks onto fresh potato gnocchi, Caesar salads, fried rice, or spaghetti carbonara.

Have you ever cured egg yolks? How did you use them?

Photo courtesy Boston Magazine