Marinated Eggs

Half the world takes a boiled egg, drops it in something dark and salty, and waits. Tea and soy in China, dashi and mirin in Japan, garlic and chili in Korea, tamarind in Thailand, caramel and coconut water in Vietnam, vinegar in a jar on a British bar. I've made tea eggs, ramen eggs and pickled eggs for years, and I started this expecting to write down some recipes. Instead I found out that my marinade has never once reached the yolk, that the ramen egg was invented in 1992 by a man who wanted the opposite of what you've seen on Instagram, that most of what I believed about rock sugar is pseudoscience — and that the slow diffusion which makes a ramen egg delicious is the exact same fact that makes a pickled egg dangerous. One physics, a dozen cuisines, and a body count of one.