The Chinese master stock (lu shui, the ‘old lu’) and the eggs that ride in it. The stock is Teochew/Chaoshan in origin, traceable to the mid-Qing, and it is never thrown away - strained, boiled, cooled, and reused indefinitely. The egg is the cheapest possible way to buy into an expensive stock: it costs nothing to add and it absorbs everything the goose and pork put in there.
Ingredients
- 8 eggs, hard-boiled and peeled (use eggs at least a week old - see notes)
- The master stock (lu shui)
- 1.5 litres water
- 150 ml light soy sauce
- 60 ml dark soy sauce (for colour)
- 60 g yellow rock sugar
- 80 ml Shaoxing wine
- 3 star anise
- 1 cassia/cinnamon stick
- 4 cloves
- 1 tsp fennel seed
- 2 slices dried licorice root (optional but traditional)
- 1 piece dried tangerine peel
- 3 slices ginger
- 2 spring onions
- 1 tsp salt, to taste
Directions
Key ingredients
Cinnamon · Rock Sugar · Soy Sauce
- Build the stock. Combine everything except the eggs in a pot. Bring to a boil, then reduce and simmer gently for 30-40 minutes so the aromatics give everything they have.
- Taste and correct. It should be markedly salty and slightly sweet - the eggs will dilute it and take some away.
- Add the peeled eggs. Simmer very gently for 15-20 minutes, then turn off the heat and let them steep in the warm stock for at least 2 hours, or overnight in the fridge.
- Serve at room temperature or cold, whole or halved, with a spoonful of the stock.
- Keep the stock. Strain out the solids. Boil it, cool it, refrigerate or freeze it. Next time: top up the water, soy, sugar and wine, refresh the aromatics, and go again.
Notes
The egg is a bystander
Lu shui is built for goose, duck, pork and tofu. The egg just rides along. That is exactly why lu dan are everywhere in China and Taiwan - they are the cheapest possible way to buy into an expensive stock.
About the ‘hundred-year master stock’
Generation-to-generation family stocks are real. VERIFIED AGES ARE NOT - every ‘100 years’ / ‘300 years’ claim I found is hedged by its own author (‘legend has it’, ‘according to hearsay’), with no named provenance. And Chinese popular press gives the game away: 百年老卤水三百万都不卖 - a hundred-year lu shui, wouldn’t sell it for three million. These are marketing assets.
The honest framing is better anyway: a master stock is not a preserved object, it is a continuously replaced one. Every cycle you lose liquid to the food and to evaporation and replace it. After a few years essentially no original molecule remains. What persists is the culture of maintenance and the recipe of replenishment - a hundred-year practice, not a hundred-year liquid.
The measurement that ends the argument
Nitrite in aged lu shui: 3-month stock = 0.64 mg/kg; 5-year stock = 1.87 mg/kg. Twenty times the age, three times the nitrite - strongly sub-linear, approaching steady state.
That cuts both ways. It means an old stock is NOT a toxin accumulator (reassuring). It also means a 100-year stock cannot taste meaningfully different from a 5-year stock. You cannot claim infinite flavour concentration and deny infinite nitrite accumulation - it is the same mass balance. Pick one. The evidence says neither.
Safety
Boil the stock before and after each use, cool it fast, and keep it refrigerated or frozen between uses. A master stock is safe because it is boiled and stored properly, not because it is old.
Peeling
Use eggs at least a week old. Albumen pH rises from ~7.6 to ~9.2 as CO2 escapes through the shell, and above pH 8.9 eggs peel easily. This is proven causally - put old eggs back under CO2 and they become hard to peel again. Fresh eggs are the worst possible eggs for this job.
See Hong Shao Dan (Red-Braised Eggs).
Getting the egg itself right: Eggs, Cooking by Temperature (Sous Vide, Induction, Steam) — what to set on a sous vide stick, an induction hob, a steamer or the Evoloop cooker, and which yolk each one gives you.