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Hello, this is Chef John from foodwishes.com with egg foo young for one. That's right. I'm going to show you how to make this big, beautiful, nutritious plate of food with little more than a couple eggs and a handful of veggies. And for me, this fast, easy recipe is one of the greatest Chinese-American comfort foods of all time. And to get started, we're going to make a super fast and easy gravy to serve over the top. And that'll start with a little bit of chicken broth. To which we will add some oyster sauce. And try to use a real one that actually has oysters in the ingredients. We will also want a little splash of soy sauce.
A little bit of rice vinegar. As well as just a touch of sugar. And some recipes call for way more than that. But, I don't like mine too sweet. And what we'll do is give that a quick mix. And then we'll take a little bit of cornstarch. And we will stir in some cold, fresh water. To form what we call in the business a slurry. Which as you'll see we'll use to thicken our gravy up in a few moments. And this is a relatively small amount since I don't want it too thick. All right, if you add too much, you're going to end up with something that looks like Jell-O. And I don't want Jell-O. I mean, we're making egg foo young, not egg foo old. But anyway, what we'll do is bring our sauce up to a boil. And just as soon as it starts bubbling
like this, we'll reduce our heat to low and pour in our slurry and whisk it in. And the great thing about a cornstarch thickened sauce is that everything happens very quickly. All right, pretty much as soon as that's stirred in, our sauce is going to thicken slightly. And it's going to become nice and shiny. And once that happens, we'll grab a ladle. And we'll keep that over the heat for just another minute or so. And this super fast and very simple sauce is going to be absolutely perfect over our egg foo young. And what we'll do is just keep that warm on the back of the stove. While we move on to prep a few veggies. And I'll be using some bean sprouts.
Along with a little bit of finely sliced cabbage. Okay, you can put anything in this, but I almost always use those two things since it provides a great texture and a little bit of sweetness. And then along with those two things, I'm going to add a couple tablespoons of freshly sliced green onion. And what we'll do is use the whiter, lighter parts for the egg. And then we'll save those green tops to garnish with later if we want. And then I also think a little bit of carrot is very nice in this. And the easiest and fastest way to do it is with a peeler. And we'll go ahead and peel a tablespoon or two. And of course, when the carrot gets too skinny to peel, we will stop and have a chef snack
before we finish up with some optional sliced ham or in my case, Canadian bacon. And this really is fantastic if you use only vegetables, but for obvious reasons, the ham works perfectly in this. And yes, you always want to test a small piece to make sure it's good. And that's it. After just a couple minutes of prep, we can move on to mix up our eggs, which starts first by adding a little bit of cornstarch into the bowl along with a little bit of cold fresh water again. Plus, we can also add some soy sauce at this point. And we'll give that a quick mix. And in the sauce, we used a slurry to thicken it, but here we're adding it as a little bit of a binder, but also and more importantly, it's going to help crisp up the edges of
our egg foo young when we pan fry it. And once that's mixed, we'll dump in two large eggs. And then we'll season this up with a pinch of salt, some ground white pepper, which is traditional, but black pepper's fine. We'll also do a few shakes of cayenne followed by a little bit of garlic powder. And then we'll finish up with a little bit of sesame oil before we add in our veggie mixture, at which point we'll take a fork and give this a good mix. And I know it might look like we have too many veggies, but that's okay. Right, to me this is almost more of a vegetable dish than an egg dish with just enough egg to keep everything together. And that's it. Once mixed, we'll head to the stove
where we have three or four tablespoons of vegetable oil that we've gotten nice and hot over medium-high heat. And what we'll do is divide this mixture into three piles in the pan. And when I say divide the mixture, I'm really talking about the vegetables and ham. Okay, the eggs are going to do what the eggs are going to do, which is going to run in between the piles. But that's exactly what we want to happen. Because once we've transferred everything in, we'll take a spatula and we will cut in between the three portions. And then we'll sort of fold and flop that egg over the top. And just folding from the bottom up over the top usually works pretty good. But we can also simply just cut off pieces and place them on top.
Okay, it really doesn't matter as long as somehow, someway, we end up with three sort of round, relatively even portions. And while we're doing this, which is going to take about a minute or so, that bottom side should be getting nice and golden brown. And we'll go ahead and flip these over, doing a little fine-tuning first if we want. But please, unlike me, don't fuss too much. Okay, in a restaurant, these portions would be deep-fried. And they're generally not even close to being in a nice uniform shapes. But anyway, we'll let that second side cook for a few minutes. And if you want, you can keep these nice
and light and golden brown. But not me. I like these deeply browned and closer to what you get if you deep-fry them. And if a few of those onions on the surface happen to char a little bit, that bothers me not at all. Okay, I just think this is a better way to go. And you're going to get even crispier edges. So that is looking just about perfect to me. And after turning, I'm going to let that first side cook for another few seconds just to brown up a little more. And basically, once they spring back to the touch, and they're as brown as you want, we're ready to serve. Which I'm going to do next to some sesame rice. And once those gorgeous patties have been plated up, we will apply our
hopefully still warm sauce, which if it's not still warm, you can heat up. And after ladling over a very generous amount of that, we'll finish up with some freshly sliced green onion tops, which we cut at an angle, because as you know, people love pointy food. And that's it. Our egg foo young is ready to egg foo enjoy. Which I'm going to do with a fork. Okay, if you ever want to really frustrate yourself, make this when you're really hungry and then try to eat it with chopsticks. All right, some people can do it. I can't. And that, my friends, really is incredible. All right, what we have here is a crusty outside with crispy edges, and then an inside that's moist, light, and tender. And while this would still be pretty
good served as is, that quick and easy gravy we made really does elevate the experience. And by the way, the amounts are going to make a fairly generous amount of sauce, which you can use over the rice in this meal, or save it and use it on rice for another meal. But anyway, the point is, the few extra minutes it takes to make the gravy is totally worth it. And it really gives our egg foo young a beautiful shine. And as I mentioned earlier, you can use anything in this. So, as usual, I encourage you to experiment. I mean, you are after all the Tim Gunn of your egg foo young for one. And if something's fashionable to put in an omelet, it will work here.
All right, things like mushrooms or peppers come to mind. And if you're wondering about cheese, I've never tried it. But if you happen to do egg foo young for one, au fromage, I would love it if you leave a comment to let us know how it came out. But whether you customize yours or not, this is retro Chinese-American comfort food at its finest, and I really do hope you give it a try soon. So, please follow the links below for the ingredient amounts, a printable written recipe, and much more info as usual. And as always, enjoy.
