Ramen Egg (Ajitama)

Ramen Eggs (味玉 - Ajitama)

With a soft, jammy yolk and umami-packed white, a perfect Ramen Egg is the crowning jewel on top of a bowl of ramen noodles. Although they're most commonly found atop a bowl of perfect ramen, these flavorful Japanese soft-boiled eggs (known as Ajitama in Japan) are super versatile. They can be added to salads, tucked into sandwiches, stuffed inside an onigiri, or even eaten as a snack.

I've got a few tricks for how to make ramen eggs taste like the ones you get in a ramen shop, so keep reading for my Ajitama recipe, and check out the video to see my technique for making soft-boiled eggs easier to peel.

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• Ramen Eggs (味玉 - Ajitama)
• Why This Recipe Works
• Ingredients for Ramen Eggs
• How to Make Ramen Eggs
• How to Store Ramen Eggs
• Ways to Eat Ramen Eggs
• 📖 Recipe
• FAQs
• Comments

Why This Recipe Works

• Putting a small crack in each egg before boiling them makes even fresh eggs easier to peel.
• Bringing the eggs to a boil and cutting the heat cooks them more slowly, making the timing to get a perfect soft-boiled egg more forgiving, giving you a soft jammy center by eliminating the temperature gradient problem where the outside of the yolk is over-cooked, and the center is still almost raw. It also avoids a sudden change in temperatures that can cause the shell to crack if you lower them straight into boiling water.
• Using chicken stock in the marinade adds full-bodied flavor and umami to the Ajitama eggs, making them taste more like they were soaked in the braising liquid from Chashu or Kakuni. Using dark soy sauce gives the ajitsuke tamago their rich color.

Ingredients for Ramen Eggs

• Eggs - Normally, when you soft-boil eggs, you want to use older eggs because they tend to be easier to peel, but I've found a way to make even fresh eggs easier to peel, which has a huge benefit. Older eggs tend to have a big air pocket in them due to evaporation, so your egg won't be perfectly shaped. By using fresh eggs, the egg white will fill out the whole shell, giving you a perfect oval egg. Other than that, I try to look for eggs from chickens fed a diet high in beta-carotene (usually in the form of red peppers). This gives the cooked yolks a vibrant orange color, making the ajitama eggs look more appealing.
• Chicken stock - Ramen-shop-style Ramen Eggs are usually made by soaking them in the leftover braising liquid from chashu or kakuni. If you're making them at home and don't want to make one of those first, chicken broth works in this Ajitama egg recipe to add similar meaty umami to the eggs without the extra effort.
• Soy sauce - Any Japanese brand of dark soy sauce will work in this marinade. Dark soy sauce will give your ramen eggs a stronger soy sauce flavor and rich mahogany color. Regular soy sauce will also work. I usually use Kikkoman. If you want to make these gluten free you can substitute tamari.
• Sake - Sake(Japanese rice wine) is a foundation flavor of Japanese cooking, and any cheap sake will work here. You don't want to use an expensive one because those tend to have a higher mill ratio on the rice, which means the sake contains less umami-producing amino acids. Some common brands include Hakutsuru, Ozeki, and Shochikubai. By the way, the alcohol content gets boiled off, so no, these eggs won't make your kids drunk. I don't recommend using "cooking sake" because it contains added salt, making your ramen eggs too salty. If you can find real brewed mirin (sweet cooking wine), you can substitute it. If you do use mirin, be sure to cut the amount of sugar in half. Some recipes suggest using rice vinegar as a substitute, but sake isn't acidic, so it won't give the ramen eggs the same umami-rich flavor.
• Sugar - A pinch of sugar helps balance the saltiness of the soy sauce. Other sweeteners, like brown sugar, coconut sugar, or honey, will also work.
• Ginger - Eggs can have a slightly sulfuric smell, even when hard-boiled. The ginger helps abate that while combining with the dark soy sauce to make the marinade taste like chashu braising liquid. You can also add aromatics such as onion or green onions to the marinade.

How to Make Ramen Eggs

Make the Marinade

The first thing you'll want to do to make an authentic-tasting Ramen Egg marinade, combine the chicken stock, dark soy sauce, sake, sugar, and ginger in a small saucepan and bring it to a gentle boil. The goal here is to evaporate all of the alcohol in the sake and soy sauce, as these can lead to harsh, bitter tastes. The cooking process will take about 2 minutes at a full boil. Be sure you keep a close eye on the pot, as it can boil over.

Remove the pot from the heat and let it cool down completely before you use it to marinate the eggs.

How to Soft Boil Eggs

For perfect Ramen Eggs, timing is crucial. This is my secret for getting the shells off of perfectly-cooked eggs with runny egg yolks. You want to crack a small round divot into the bottom of each egg with the back of a spoon. The goal is to hit it hard enough to crack the hard outer shell, but not so hard that you tear the soft inner membrane. This may take a little practice, but it makes the eggs a lot easier to peel.

Place the eggs in a pot of water that's just large enough to hold all 6 eggs in a single layer, and make sure they're covered by about 2-inches of water.

Bring the pot to a rolling boil over high heat and then turn off the heat and set a timer for 5 to 6 minutes. The eggs will cook slowly in the warm water. This is what gives the yolks their jammy texture. If you prefer a runny yolk, reduce the cooking time by a couple of minutes. For hard-boiled eggs, increase the cook time to 12 minutes.

There are so many variables that can affect cook time, such as the size of your eggs, the temperature of the eggs and water when you started, the efficiency of your stove, and even your altitude, so you may have to try this a few times before you get the length of time dialed in. I have a full recipe explaining my method for making perfect boiled eggs, where I take a deep dive into the science of producing perfect, consistent results.

Cooling and Peeling the Eggs

Once the timer is up, drain the pot and repeatedly fill it with cold water to rapidly cool the eggs. You can also make an ice water bath. Once the water doesn't warm up right away, leave the soft-boiled eggs soaking in the cold water bath for at least 20 minutes. This is another step that I've found that makes them easier to peel.

Crack the eggs all over using the back of a spoon and drop them back into the bowl of ice water. Leave the cracked eggs in ice water for a few minutes.

Peel the eggs by starting from the bottom of the egg (where you made the divot), and work in a spiral around the egg, keeping it wet at all times. If you start having trouble removing the shell, drop it back in the ice bath or cold water for a few minutes. Make sure you peel the inner membrane off of the egg white, or your eggs won't marinate evenly.

Marinating Ramen Eggs

Remove the ginger from the soy sauce mixture and pour it into a zipper bag along with the peeled eggs. Press out as much air from the bag as you can and seal it.

Put the bag in a bowl and let the eggs marinate for at least 8 hours, or up to 12 hours. You'll want to swish the ajitama eggs around in the marinade ingredients periodically to prevent light spots where the eggs are touching each other.

How to Store Ramen Eggs

When the Ajitama are done, remove them from the marinade and keep them in an airtight container until you are ready to use them. They should last for at least 3 days in the fridge. You can also reuse the marinade up to 3 times before it gets too diluted, so you may want to hang onto that.

Ways to Eat Ramen Eggs

Although they're delicious over a hot bowl of ramen noodles, these versatile marinated eggs are used in many ways in Japanese cuisine. Here are just a few ideas:

• Ramen - These are perfect to serve with your favorite ramen bowl. Check out these recipes for Miso Ramen, Chicken Ramen, Tsukemen, Shoyu Ramen, Tonkotsu Ramen, and Tantanmen.
• Potato salad - tear a few eggs into pieces and mix them into potato salad.
• Salad - these make for a colorful, protein-packed topping for almost any green salad.
• Sandwich - Spread some mayonnaise onto two slices of sandwich bread and add a few jammy ramen eggs that have been sliced in half. You can also add them to a Japanese-style egg salad sandwich.
• Breakfast - Ajitsuke tamago also make a great breakfast food. They make a tasty side dish for a bowl of rice or topping for avocado toast, but they're also delicious on their own.
• Onigiri - you can stuff a whole Ajitsuke Tamago inside of an onigiri.

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