This incredibly fast dish of scrambled eggs with bean sprouts can round out any Chinese meal, or serve as a quick meal in itself.
Several pantry ingredients give the scrambled eggs so much flavor, and the bean sprouts add texture reminiscent of egg foo young or Vietnamese bánh xèo.
Learn to Eat Eggs Anytime
We’re always looking for more exciting ways to cook eggs for dinner. Unlike in the U.S., in China, eggs are not just breakfast food. They’re anytime food!
While egg prices have certainly gone up over the past few years, they are a filling alternative to even more expensive meats. They’re also much quicker to prepare.
In our family, we have several egg dishes in our back pockets to round out a Chinese meal if we don’t feel we quite have enough dishes and need an extra high-protein option to make sure everyone walks away from the dinner table satisfied.
Recipes like tomato egg stir-fry, steamed eggs with crispy pork, and scrambled eggs with salted chilies (duo jiao) are in our regular rotation. (See our full list of egg recipes!)
We love eating eggs, which is why we decided to get some chickens and ducks in our yard. They lay lovely eggs for all our blogging endeavors and meals.
The Inspiration for this Recipe
That said, we’re always looking for new ways to use eggs. Especially as our chickens and ducks have really ramped up their laying game as the days have gotten longer.
(Did you know that they lay their eggs in response to sunlight? In the winter, when the days are short, our chickens almost completely stop laying eggs. They resume in spring.)
We have an extra refrigerator and chest freezer in my parents’ basement (tell me you’re food bloggers without telling me you’re food bloggers), and that basement fridge is filled with cartons of chicken and duck eggs, all dated and ready to be used in the order in which we collected them.
Sometimes, they really pile up, and we look for new ways to use them. At one dinner, my mom thought of my recipe for Furong Dan (a Hong Kong egg omelet that was the original inspiration for Chinese American Egg Foo Young dishes—see Chicken Egg Foo Young and Shrimp Egg Foo Young).
Furong Dan is in our cookbook, and it’s one of my FAVORITE of the 100 recipes in that book. It combines eggs with Chinese roast pork, shrimp, bean sprouts, and chives into an incredibly delicious and satisfying meal. (If you have the book and haven’t tried it yet, I highly recommend it, and not just because it was my recipe!)
Anyway, my mom was whipping up a quick dinner one night and decided to riff on it. She didn’t have roast pork or shrimp around, but she did have bean sprouts. She seasoned the eggs in a similar way and added a pinch of five spice powder. (Sort of as a stand-in for the flavors you might get from roast pork.)
The resulting dish was a complete surprise and so tasty and simple to make, we wanted to document it!
Recipe Instructions
In a large bowl, beat the eggs with the oyster sauce, salt, sugar, sesame oil, white pepper, and five spice powder.
Combine the cornstarch and water into a slurry, and then beat it into the eggs.
Stir in the bean sprouts and scallion whites.
Heat the wok until smoking. Add the oil. Then add the egg mixture. As the egg sets, slowly stir to scramble, just until the eggs are cooked through.
Plate and sprinkle with the scallion greens. Serve.
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Recipe
Scrambled Eggs with Bean Sprouts
Ingredients
- 6 large eggs
- 1/2 tablespoon oyster sauce
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
- 1/4 teaspoon white pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon five spice powder
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- 2 tablespoona water
- 1 cup mung bean sprouts
- 1 scallion whites cut on a sharp angle into 1-inch pieces and greens chopped
- 3 tablespoons oil
Instructions
- In a large bowl, beat the eggs with the oyster sauce, salt, sugar, sesame oil, white pepper, and five spice powder.
- Combine the cornstarch and water into a slurry, and then beat it into the eggs. Stir in the bean sprouts and scallion whites.
- Heat the wok until smoking. Add the oil. Then add the egg mixture. As the egg sets, slowly stir to scramble, just until the eggs are cooked through. Plate and sprinkle with the scallion greens. Serve.
