Chawanmushi (Japanese Steamed Egg)

Today, my partner and I decided to take on the challenge of Chawanmushi! Chawanmushi has always been a childhood favorite of mine. When I still lived in Taiwan I remember bugging my aunt to order Chawanmushi every time we went to any sushi restaurant. Chawanmushi is a silky smooth savory soft egg custard subtly and delicately flavoured, yet packed with Umami. Furthermore, this is perfect if you want a light snack because this dish can be cooked in 30 minutes!

Here are the ingredients we prepped:

1. Dashi
2. Tofu (not recommended)
3. Eggs
4. Green Onion
5. Chicken thigh
6. Salt
7. Water
8. Soy Sauce
9. Mirin
10. Love <3

You are free to add more toppings such as fish cake, mushroom, shrimp, clams…etc. However, we do not recommend tofu because the texture is too similar to the egg (which is the highlight hehe).

First, you want to beat 3 eggs into a big bowl and then strain the egg mixture. We did not do this because we are lazy, but the eggs still turned out fine so who knows. Then, you want to add your dashi mixture, salt, soy sauce, and mirin into your egg. Make sure the dashi mixture is not too hot or else it will cook the egg!

Second, put the desired toppings at the bottom of the small bowl that you plan on steaming with. We chose chicken and tofu because we are both lazy men so we didn’t have anything in the fridge that was creative smh.

Next, pour your egg mixture into the small bowls. YUMMY!

After putting the items into the instant pot, close the lid and click STEAM, make sure it’s LOW pressure, and set the timer for zero (0) minutes (we found that 5 minutes work better but uhhhhh teehee).

Finally, we put them into the instant pot to steam it.

It will take about 10 minutes to reach the optimal pressure. Then beep for 0 minutes. Then it will naturally release. Set your own timer for 10 minutes natural release. At 10 minutes of alarm, open the lid take out one chawanmushi cup and go to the next step. If the lid doesn’t open, then it means the pressure hasn’t been fully released yet. Prepare a kitchen towel and turn the nozzle to release pressure. Only a little bit of steam should be left, so don’t be scared. Once the pressure has released, you can open the lid.

We retrieved the recipe from:

Instant Pot Chawanmushi (Video) 茶碗蒸し (圧力鍋)

We followed the instant pot recipe to a T! but it did not cook properly so we had to keep readjusting the settings to make sure the eggs are cooked. It took us way too long because our bowls were too big! How long did it take us? I forgot but way too long. For the largest bowl, we had to adjust it 5 times before it was fully cooked!

Anyways this is the final product! YUM 😀

Would definitely make this again, 9/10 🙂