Cantonese style Scrambled Eggs (黄埔炒蛋)

Everyone's got their favorite way to scramble an egg, and this one is mine. What you're looking at is a Cantonese scrambled egg dish called wangbo chaodan, and for me at least, it ticks all the boxes. See, I've always been more of a curd guy, so when the rest of the internet collectively drooled itself over Gordon Ramsay making soft scrambled eggs… that style never really did it for me. I personally prefer something with a bit more substance, something that you'd actually still enjoy eating sans toast. And on that front, wangbo chaodan delivers. All while avoiding some of the pitfalls that you do sometimes see with other curdy approaches. The end result is moist, rich, silky, and keeps the eggs at what I feel to be the perfect scrambled egg doneness. And you're also not limited just eggs. In Guangdong, scrambled eggs with beef is also a classic, and ditto with shrimp, and we've covered that on this channel before. But you can also really just toss in whatever you want. Today, we'll show you a simple variant with Chinese yellow chives and char siu BBQ pork, but feel free to let your imagination run crazy. And because we believe that everybody should make these eggs, in addition to showing you the traditional way, we've even hacked together a way to cook them without gas or wok, using nothing but a nonstick skillet and an electric stove. So right, to get started with Cantonese scrambled eggs, you'll need… eggs. These are five eggs that we'll first separate into the whites and yolks. Now, separating these is optional, but it is traditional in restaurants, and we'll make it a bit easier to see what's going on here. Because first, we'll just grab those whites and whisk them till foamy. You're not trying to make a meringue here or anything, just whisk it till you can start to see some big bubbles like this. Then once you're about ready to scramble, combine the whites with the yolks and give it a super brief mix. Now toss in a half teaspoon salt, half teaspoon sugar, eighth teaspoon white pepper powder, eighth teaspoon MSG and you could swap that for chicken bouillon powder if you need, a half teaspoon liaojiu aka Shaoxing wine, and you could skip that if you don't have any on hand, one teaspoon of toasted sesame oil, and a slurry of a teaspoon of cornstarch mixed with a tablespoon of water. Be sure not to skip the cornstarch here though, that's going to help keep your egg moist and prevent overcooking. Now just give that another good whisk till you can start to see some bubbles again, and then we can fry. Now, it's going to be a lot easier for me to work this egg on a full size stove, so forgive us for moving inside real quick. But as we always do when working with wok, first, longyao. Get your wok piping hot, shut off the heat and add in your oil. Here we're going in with a tablespoon and a half of lard. For a good wangbo charan, that lard is pretty non-negotiable and sort of the only must-have ingredient here besides the egg. So then just heat that up over a high flame till it's bubbling around a pair of chopsticks, and… drop in your egg. The egg'll quickly puff up a bit, so then immediately take your wok off the flame and scoop from the bottom and lay it on top. Then move the wok back on the flame, wait until little bubbles start to form around the edges, about ten seconds or so, then move it off the flame again. The idea here is to let the uncooked egg drain off, and layer the cooked portions on top of each other so that they don't get overdone. So then just repeat that process of waiting till you see the bubbles, moving it off the flame and layering… until you've worked through all the uncooked egg. Now take it out, and just like that your Cantonese scrambled egg is done. All well and good, but then the question naturally follows of whether you could execute the same thing with a standard wok-less Western kitchen. So let's try and give this a go with nothing but a humble nonstick skillet. So toss your tablespoon and a half of lard in your skillet and melt it over a high flame. Heat that up to the point where bubbles begin to form around a pair of chopsticks, then drop in the egg. It'll quickly start to puff and set, so then pull the cooked bits to one side of the skillet. Now adjust your skillet so that only the uncooked side is over the burner, then wait until bubbles form, about 10 seconds or so, and layer the newly cooked side up and over the egg. Repeat this process and if you ever find things are getting a bit too hot, just take it off the flame like we did with the wok version. Then to mimic the verticality of a wangbo chaodan, I like to sort of cut those in half and lay one side over the other. And with that, you do have a very similar egg, though I definitely chose the wrong serving plate here. So then last up, our version with the add-ins. Here we just sliced up 60 grams of char siu BBQ pork together with 20 grams of zhouhuang, Chinese yellow chives. These zhouhuang are sometimes available at some Chinese supermarkets, but don't necessarily hold your breath – feel free to swap instead for the white portion of a few scallions if you can't find them. But no matter what, because using this method our egg cooks in like a minute flat, you will need to precook any add-ins. For the zhouhuang yellow chives, that means toasting them in a dry wok over a medium flame for about two minutes, or until they become slightly wilted and obviously fragrant. For the char siu, you could use it straight up, but because we bought ours at the market we'll fry it over a medium flame for about a minute… and if you're using scallion instead of that zhouhuang, you can just fry that together with your pork. And now these are ready to go in some egg. So right, again, don't feel obliged to separate the whites and yolks like we did before – you can also get perfectly good results just leaving them all You'll just need to make sure that you really go at it and do a bang up job whisking. Go for about a minute or so, or until you can see some obvious bubbles like this. So then just season that same as before, give it a real good whisk again, add in your add-ins, and cook using your method of choice. One nice thing about tossing some other stuff in here though, is that you end up getting a bit more volume to the dish than just the egg itself. So again, really, go nuts here. Curious what it'd be like with chorizo and cheese? Make it with chorizo and cheese. Just the same approach as always. Out, and you've got yourself what I think are some of the best damn scrambled eggs in the world. So during research, we came across of a different method of making wangbo chaodan, which is by the Tonka Bo people living around Wangbo Old Port. What they do is that they would quickly deep fry the egg in lard, and then immediately strain it. However, during our testing, that method came out to be greasy and unsatisfactory, so if you know anything about that method, let us know in the comment section, because we definitely do wanna learn. So right, check out the description box for a detailed recipe, a big thank you for everyone that's supporting us on Patreon, and of course, subscribe for more Chinese cooking videos.