Egg Foo Young, Cantonese style - How to Make the Original Fuyong Dan (芙蓉蛋)

This dish is a Hong Kong cha chan ting classic, and while I know the takeout versions made its way around the world, today we wanted to show you how to make it the original Cantonese way. To get started with egg foo yong, you need eggs, 5 to be precise, crack em open, then season with a teaspoon of salt, a half tablespoon of sugar, and a half teaspoon or so of white pepper powder. To make the eggs a bit creamier, add in a touch of oil, about a teaspoon, then make a slurry of 2 teaspoons cornstarch mixed with roughly a tablespoon of water, and toss it in. Cause we're cooking these in a wok, you'll really want that cornstarch slurry. Eggs are delicate, so if they cook too fast, a tight web of proteins will start to form, squeezing out the moisture and leaving you with dry eggs. Cornstarch gets in the way of these bonds forming though, keeping your foo yong dan moist and tasty. As an aside, this is also a nice technique to use for western style scrambled eggs. So just keep on whisking those eggs thoroughly till the whites are completely broken and there's no longer any stray strands. Set that aside, and we can prep our fillings. We'll be putting in 100 grams of fresh shrimp, and an equal amount of pork that we minced by hand. Marinate your pork in the standard marinade of a quarter teaspoon salt, a half teaspoon of sugar, a half teaspoon of cornstarch, a quarter teaspoon of soy sauce, and a half teaspoon liaojiu aka Shaoxing wine. Mix it till it's nice and even, then coat with a half teaspoon of oil. I should note that in Hong Kong, char siu is generally used in place of this minced, so if you've got a good source for char siu, feel free to go that route as well. For the shrimp, we'll just do a basic dry marinade of a quarter teaspoon salt and a half teaspoon of cornstarch. If you're working with frozen shrimp and want a little more pop to them, you could also opt for a salt and baking soda marinade instead. Now set those aside for 15 minutes. 15 minutes later, we'll give those fillings a quick fry. As always, first, liang you. Get that wok piping hot, shut off the heat, add in your oil, and give it a swirl to get a nice nonstick surface. Heat on medium now. Add in the pork mince. Give it a fry for about a minute, and once that pork's started to change color, add in the shrimp. Give those a fry till the shrimp are done, about 30 seconds, then take them out. Going back to our egg now, we'll add in about 10 pieces of the white part of the green onion, cut into 2 inch sections. We'll also be tossing in a quarter of an onion, thinly sliced. And that cooked pork and shrimp. Make sure your meat's close to room temperature when you add it, cause you don't want the filling to start cooking the egg. Give it a rough mix, and we are ready to fry some egg. As always, first, liang you. You need a little more oil than usual here, about a quarter cup. Once you've gotten that nonstick surface, heat the oil up to about 160 degrees centigrade, or when bubbles start to form around a pair of chopsticks. Add in the egg, and it should start to puff up like this in a really satisfying sort of way. Your flame at medium low now. To help it cook evenly, start pulling the egg from the bottom of the center out, sort of like how you'd start off an omelette. Make sure your fillings are spread evenly throughout, and once the egg's started to set, in about a minute, tilt the wok to move around the excess and get any places that are still a little uneven. Now to flip. This egg's soft, so you're not going to be able to get it all in one go. Grab as much of the egg as you can get at once, and flip. To get more of a restaurant look, you could also slice this into quarters at this stage, but the important bit is just to get good, sizable chunks. Keep cooking for about a minute or so. Make sure that you've got four decent looking pieces, then... This dish is great, and it's usually eaten directly with some rice. Now I know some of you might be more familiar with that American Chinese takeout version, which is served with sauce. This is because the takeout version's usually deep fried, which draws moisture out of the egg. To compensate, it's sauced, which generally seems to be a simple Cantonese chian. We'll go into how to make that sauce in the reddit post, but for this version, much better as is. I hope you'll give this a try. Check out the Reddit link in the description box for a detailed recipe, and subscribe for more Chinese cooking videos.