[Check out my latest Salted Egg Chicken and Buttermilk Waffle Recipe]
If someone is to ask me now what I think is the national food of Singapore, I would be keen to say it’s ‘anything salted egg’ whether it’s salted egg chicken, salted egg prawns, salted egg squids or salted egg crabs. These days, we could even get salted egg croissants, salted egg tarts, salted egg potato chips, salted egg fish skins, salted egg ice cream, salted egg donuts and the list goes on and on.
Salted egg to me is a comfort food and this Salted Egg Chicken recipe never fails to make my husband swoon over it because the smell of the salted egg yolks just makes us salivate and one bite is good enough to have us hanker for more. I like my version with lots of crispy curry leaves that are just so aromatic. Do you?
Check out my Salted Egg Prawn Recipe and other tantalising fried chicken recipes too – Salt and Pepper Chicken and Lemon Chicken – enjoy! 🙂
- 600g boneless chicken leg meat, cut into bite-sized pieces
- 1 egg, beaten
- 1 cup tapioca flour
- salt & ground white pepper
- sunflower oil for frying
- 2 tbsp unsalted butter
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- handful of curry leaves
- 2 tbsp evaporated milk
- 4 salted egg yolks, steamed & mashed
Hi! can i ask if there’s an alternative to steaming the egg yolks?
Hi Esther, you can just boil the salted eggs in whole (like how you’d do for hard-boiled chicken eggs) and then remove the yolks from the whites. Works the same. Cheers!
It would be great to make a video of it!!
Hi, may know where to get salted egg yolks by itself in singapore? Or do u have to buy the whole egg and seperate them?
Hi, I’ve never seen salted egg yolks being sold on their own so yes, I would say buy the whole eggs and separate them yourself which is really easy to do. Cheers.
Just cooked it today. Best recipe ever! The chicken taste so great and I’m definitely going to cook it again real soon. No need to eat from outside anymore coz this is better than outside ones. Thanks so much for sharing!
Hi Jenny, I’m so glad to know you like the recipe. It also works with prawns, squids, sliced lotus root or potato chips. Give it a try! 😉
I think geylang serai market sell salted egg yolk nvm later i go check it out Ä‘
Most if not all markets would sell salted eggs at the egg stalls so shouldn’t be a problem to get them. Otherwise, all supermarkets will have them too. Cheers.
Theu do sell only the salted egg yolk .. Market ..
Hi Geri, can i ask what type of butter you use? Cause few months back i tried cooking salted egg chicken and failed badly!! I melted the butter(Emborg Unsalted) on my pan and tried to mix with the yolk for less than a min, the whole mixture got burnt!! The fire level that i set is low thou…Or will adding olive oil helps to prevent my mixture from burning?
Hi Chan, the butter you use is fine but do note butter has a low heating point so if you don’t add oil (olive, canola, sunflower, peanut or coconut oil works fine), it will burn very quickly in your pan regardless whether you put on low heat or not. Give it a try again and see how it goes. Good luck!
Thanks for the reply. I will try it out again.
No problem. Hope it works for you this time. Let me know how it goes. Cheers.
Hi Geri,
Like to check, the salted egg that you bought is those cooked type? At the supermarket, I saw only those salted egg, covered with black coating outside. Where can I get those Fresh salted egg? Kindly advise.
Hi Grace, those covered with black coating from the supermarket or wet market are fresh salted eggs. The ones I use are exactly that and you just need to cook them to extract the yolks. Cheers.
it is better if you could get those salted eggs covered with soil. Extract the yolk out of it then steam. This help to add a bit moist to eggs so it wont be feel dry and easily burnt and it make a perfect foamy bubbly finish with that moisture.
Hi just came across this recipe. Any alternative if I don’t have tapioca flour? Thanks!
Hi, the closest alternative is probably potato flour because corn flour or plain flour doesn’t really give the same crisp as tapioca flour when fried. I would still strongly recommend tapioca flour rather than substituting it for something else. Cheers.
Hi there! If I were to use this recipe for potato chips, would the sauce make the chips turn soggy? I read that it’s better to use salted egg yolk powder but I’ll probably have trouble getting that. Thanks!!
Hi, my recipe is the dry version, it’s not really a sauce that can drench. It doesn’t matter whether you use powder or fresh yolk because it’s the amount of liquid (oil, butter, evaporated milk) you add that will affect the crispiness of the ingredient you’re using. Hope this helps. Cheers.
Hi i just came across this recipe. Any alternative for the evaporated milk?
Hi, you can use regular milk (I would suggest skimmed milk as its flavour is milder) or just omit the evaporated milk from the recipe.
Can use normal salted egg instead of duck,wats the difference?
The standard salted eggs that we can get from supermarkets or wet markets here are duck eggs.
Hello! Need clarification for Step 4. Once the olive oil is heated up, do you add butter inside the oil and mix? Or pour the oil into the melted butter? Thanks.
Hi, you can do either way but I prefer to add oil first before the butter as the latter burns up rather quickly so the olive oil is just an additional medium to raise the heating point (hence to prevent quick burning). Let me know how it goes when you have the chance to make this. Enjoy!
Hi, would you recommend double fry if i am using the wings instead of thigh meat?
Sure, that sounds good. I do double-fry my chicken sometimes to ensure max. crisp and crunch. Let me know how it goes when you’ve the chance to make these. Cheers.
Hi, can i not use butter? Just wondering
No hard and fast rule, you can definitely skip the butter but the overall flavour will not be as good.
Hi! I was craving for a salted egg recipe and this by far has the most enticing picture on google. Will definitely try this recipe this weekend! This is Yen of birdsnchandeliers by the way 😀
Let me know how it goes and hope you like it! 🙂
Is it fine without the curry leaves?
I wouldn’t recommend that as curry leaves are one of the main ingredients that imparts a lovely fragrance & aroma. You can try omitting them but the outcome wouldn’t be as good.
Hi…. i just tried ur cooking today. And i would say it was a BIG SUCCESS!!!… tasted very good.. btw, can i know how to make it to have abit more gravy???
Hello Firdaus, I’m glad you enjoyed the recipe. For more sauce, you can just double the portion of ingredients for the sauce and use the same amount of chicken. Happy cooking! 🙂
Hi.. i was trying your recipe today. and It was really good ! love it. will definitely make it again. and may i ask your permit for using your picture to my brochure? thanks before
Hi, I’m glad you like the recipe. May I know what kind of brochure is that? Would appreciate if you can email me at geri@springtomorrow.com with more info. Thanks.
I did this recipe without steaming the eggs and it tasted divine! I also added small one chilli to add some kick to it.
Hi, I just tried this and it tastes so good! I used normal milk instead and the measurements I follow by heart but the end result is still amazing! No doubt, salted egg ANYTHING is always good 🙂
I second that! 🙂 Glad you enjoy the dish!
I just tried this and it tastes amazing! I did some adjustments and followed most of the measurements by heart. I used fried chicken powder, low fat milk, normal cooking oil. I’m abit dissapointed that the white part of the salted egg can’t be used in this recipe, idk what to do with it now HAHAHA Overall, it still tasted amazing but oh well, salted egg ANYTHING is always amazing <3
Don’t waste the whites. You can pair that with rice porridge like eating Teochew muay or mash it up and add into fried rice. Personally, I like to use the salted egg whites to make chicken porridge with olive vegetables – enhances flavour so you don’t have to add more salt. 🙂
curry leaves are sooo expensive here in Australia. Can I use curry powder instead?
nope, can’t use curry powder. you’ll change the flavour of this dish. if you can’t get the leaves, just omit them from the recipe so at least the salted egg flavour is there.