Making salted eggs at home requires just salt, water, and fresh eggs, with a curing time of at least three weeks. The process is simple: submerge eggs in a saturated brine solution and wait. Duck eggs are the traditional choice because their larger, fattier yolks develop the prized oily, sandy texture that makes salted eggs so distinctive, but chicken eggs work too.
What You Need
The ingredient list is short. You need fresh eggs (duck or chicken), fine salt, water, and a glass jar or food-safe container large enough to hold the eggs fully submerged. For roughly 20 eggs, plan on about 6 cups of water and 1 to 1.5 cups of fine salt. The exact ratio depends on how salty you want the finished product.
Duck eggs are preferred for a reason. Their yolks contain more fat than chicken egg yolks, which means the curing process produces a richer, more dramatic result: that deep orange, oily center you see in restaurant dishes. Chicken eggs will still cure properly, but the yolks will be smaller and slightly less luxurious.
The Brine Method Step by Step
Bring your water to a boil, then stir in the salt until it fully dissolves. A common starting ratio is 4 cups of water to 1 cup of salt for a milder result, or 3 cups of water to 1 cup of salt if you prefer a stronger cure. Let the brine cool completely before pouring it over the eggs. This is important: hot brine will partially cook the whites and ruin the texture.
Place clean, uncracked eggs into your jar and pour the cooled brine over them. The eggs will want to float, so weigh them down with a small plate or a sealed zip-lock bag filled with extra brine to keep every egg submerged. Seal the jar and store it at room temperature in a cool, dark spot. Some recipes call for refrigeration, but traditional methods cure at room temperature just fine.
The minimum curing time is 21 days. At three weeks, the whites will be noticeably salty and the yolks will have started to firm up. For that coveted oily, orange yolk that oozes when you cut into it, cure for 4 to 6 weeks. Going beyond two months risks making the eggs unpleasantly salty, so pull them out of the brine before that point. Once they’re done, store the eggs in the refrigerator to stop the curing process.
Adding Aromatics to the Brine
A plain salt brine works perfectly, but traditional Chinese recipes often infuse the brine with spices for a more complex flavor. Star anise, Sichuan peppercorns, cinnamon bark, and black cardamom are the classic additions. The Hong Kong Cookery uses 6 star anise, 4 teaspoons of Sichuan peppercorns, 3 pieces of cinnamon bark, and 3 black cardamoms for a batch of 20 eggs, along with about 2.5 tablespoons of Shaoxing wine.
Add the spices to the water while it boils so their oils release into the brine. The scent permeates the egg whites over the weeks of curing, giving them a warm, aromatic quality that plain salt alone can’t achieve. Leave the spices in the jar for the full curing period.
How to Tell When They’re Ready
There’s no way to check readiness without sacrificing an egg. After three weeks, crack one open and press the yolk gently. A properly cured yolk will be firm to the touch and bright orange rather than the pale yellow of a fresh egg. If you’d rather taste-test, hard boil one egg, slice it in half, and try the yolk. If it’s not salty enough, let the remaining eggs cure for another week and test again.
The hallmark of a great salted egg yolk is a grainy, sandy texture with visible oil. This happens because sodium ions break apart the proteins that normally keep fat evenly suspended throughout the yolk. As curing continues, tiny fat droplets separate and merge into larger pools of oil, while the protein structures shrink and pack together into dense, irregular granules. The oil seeps into the gaps between these granules, creating that signature loose, sandy, oily texture. This is why longer curing (up to about 6 weeks) produces oilier yolks.
The Dry Cure Alternative
If you don’t want to deal with jars of brine, there’s a simpler method. Make a thick paste of salt and water (roughly equal parts, mixed until it resembles wet sand) and coat each egg in a layer about half a centimeter thick. Wrap each coated egg in plastic wrap or place them in a sealed container, and cure for the same 3 to 6 weeks. The dry method produces the same result. Some cooks find it easier because there’s no need to keep eggs submerged and no risk of floating.
Cooking and Using Salted Eggs
Salted eggs are not eaten raw. The most common preparation is simply hard boiling them for 10 to 12 minutes, then slicing them in half to serve alongside rice porridge (congee), steamed rice, or as part of a larger meal. The whites are translucent and very salty, while the yolks are dense and rich.
Many recipes call for the yolks only. Salted egg yolk is the star ingredient in dishes like salted egg shrimp, salted egg fish skin chips, and salted egg sauce over vegetables or tofu. To use just the yolks, crack the raw cured eggs, separate the yolks, and bake them at around 325°F (160°C) for about 15 minutes until they’re slightly dried and deepened in color. From there, they can be crumbled into stir-fries or mashed into a sauce with butter.
Sodium Content and Storage
Salted eggs are, unsurprisingly, high in sodium. A salted duck egg yolk contains roughly 3,780 mg of sodium per 100 grams, and the white contains about 2,250 mg per 100 grams. For context, the WHO recommends keeping total daily sodium intake below 2,000 mg. A single salted egg won’t hit that ceiling on its own since each egg weighs far less than 100 grams, but it will account for a significant portion of your daily limit. Pairing salted eggs with plain, unseasoned foods like white rice or congee is a practical way to keep the overall meal in check.
Once cured, move the eggs from the brine to the refrigerator. Raw cured eggs keep for several weeks refrigerated. Boiled salted eggs should be treated like any cooked egg: store them in the fridge at 45°F (7°C) or below and eat within a week. If you’ve made a large batch and won’t use them quickly, boiling them all at once and freezing just the yolks is an option, since the yolks hold their texture well after freezing while the whites become rubbery.