A new experiment! I’ve wanted to do this one for a long time, mainly because I’m interested in how the dry, aromatic yolk will enhance the flavor profile (& depth) of a meal (more about these meals in part two!) when added to it.

Anyways, this is part one – the setup of the experiment. As usual, I’ll be reporting my findings in part two.

Fresh chicken egg yolk is comprised of around 50% water, 30% fat, 17% protein, 2% minerals, and less than 1% carbohydrates. It has a fatty, kind of buttery taste to it. The taste also depends on the egg origin – in my honest opinion, eggs from the chickens that my aunt raises (and that my grandma used to raise) taste a lot better than the store-bought kind. The taste depends on how the chickens are raised, fed, and whether they can freely walk around a big outdoor patch of land, where they can “express their natural behaviors”. This isn’t that kind of post, though, I’m not going to dive deep into the differences, I just wanted to write some kind of short introduction so I can get to the good part. I’m also not diving deep into the science of what I’m trying to do; basically, I’m doing a dry cure of an egg yolk. The process of dry curing is well established and has been used since ancient times. The water is removed (drawn out) from the foodstuff (historically, mainly meat) with the help of salt by the process called osmosis, which in turn preserves it and makes it both microbiologically and chemically stable for long-term consumption. The process also develops deep, savory flavor in the foodstuff, especially when used in conjunction with various spices.

The good part

The cure was made by combining 150 g of table salt with 50% of the salt weight in white, granulated, table sugar (75 g). Next, half a pinch (I know, highly scientific), or around 1-2 g of dried rosemary, dried basil, cumin seeds, and whole black peppercorns each were pulverized in an electric coffee grinder and added to the salt & sugar mixture. The sugar is added to “mellow out” the salt and develop a more complex flavor (adding just the salt will, theoretically, make the yolk just taste salty).

A 2-3 cm thick layer of this cure was added to a ceramic dish. Then, a whole egg was used to make a little circular indentation or crater in the cure, for the yolk to sit in. Next, one chicken egg was cracked and the yolk separated by hand, and then added to the crater. After that, more of the same cure was sprinkled on top of the yolk, so it covers it completely. Then, the dish with the prepared cure and yolk was loosely covered with a small plastic bag and placed in the fridge.



My reasoning for using the bag is so that my cure doesn’t absorb excess moisture or smells from other food in the fridge.

I’ll let this experiment sit in the fridge for 4 full days. Then I’ll use my dehydrator to finish the drying process (more in part two).

I used one egg yolk so that I can check if the salt/sugar ratios, and the spices, are okay. If this experiment is successful (taste-wise), I plan on maybe experimenting with a different kind of yolk (duck or goose eggs, for example), and/or mixing up the herbs and spices to create a unique flavor. We’ll see.