When we make a liter of dashi, we often use 700 ml for kenchin-jiru or miso soup and save the remaining 300 ml for chawanmushi — a soft, savory egg custard, eaten warm with a spoon.
It comes to the table with a spoon instead of chopsticks, which already makes it feel like a small treat. It sets somewhere between custard and soup, just firm enough to hold the shape of your spoon, soft enough to melt on the tongue.
It is simpler than it looks: beat 2 eggs, stir in three times as much cooled dashi, strain, and steam gently. That is the whole dish — everything below is the detail.
In these photos we steamed it in one large bowl and put it in the middle of the table, so everyone could spoon out their own. Small cups work just as well, cook a little faster, and you can enjoy having different picks in each one — whatever each person likes best. Both timings are below.
Serves 2–3 as a side · About 35–45 minutes, plus soaking the shiitake
Ingredients
- 2 eggs — about 100 ml, beaten
- 300 ml unsalted dashi, cooled — we use kombu and dried shiitake dashi
- ¼ tsp fine salt
- ½ tsp soy sauce
For underneath
- 60g boneless, skinless chicken thigh, cut into 1cm pieces, plus a small pinch of salt
- 2 dried shiitake, soaked until fully softened, stems removed and caps sliced
- 3–4 imitation crab sticks, cut into bite-sized pieces
- A few snow peas, a few sprigs of mitsuba, or finely sliced green onion
Use them all together, as we did in the large bowl, or pick just the ones you like. We measure with a 5 ml teaspoon.
How to make it
- Soak the shiitake, salt the chicken. Soak the dried shiitake in cold water in the refrigerator until they are soft all the way through — overnight is best. If they have already been in your dashi, just slice them. If you use the soaking water, count it as part of the 300 ml rather than adding it on top. Sprinkle the chicken with a small pinch of salt, leave it for 5–10 minutes, then pat away the moisture with a paper towel.
- Beat the eggs without lifting them. Keep the tips of your chopsticks against the bottom of the bowl and move them from side to side to cut through the whites. A fork works too, kept low. You are mixing, not whipping — foam turns into holes in the finished custard.
- Season the dashi, then strain. Stir the salt and soy sauce into the cooled dashi and combine it with the eggs. Let the dashi cool first, or it starts cooking the eggs before they reach the steamer. Pour the mixture through a fine strainer. This one step is the difference between silky and grainy.
- Fill the bowl, or the cups. Arrange your fillings in one heatproof serving bowl, or in 2–3 small heatproof cups, keeping the pieces of chicken apart so they cook evenly. Pour the egg mixture in gently, filling each container no more than about four-fifths full, and lift off any bubbles with the edge of a spoon.
- Set up the steamer. Wrap the steamer lid in a clean kitchen towel and tie the ends up over the top, well away from the flame, so condensation does not drip water into the custard. Or cover each container loosely with foil and use the lid as it is. Bring the water to a boil before you start counting — you can set the bowl or cups on the rack while the water is still cold if that is easier to handle, but the timing begins when the steamer is full of steam.
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Now steam it.
- One large, shallow bowl: 2 minutes on high, then 18–25 minutes on low.
- Two or three small cups: 1–2 minutes on high, then 10–15 minutes on low.
- Check the middle, then finish. The center should be softly set, with a gentle wobble. Slip a skewer into it: what rises should be clear liquid, not cloudy with raw egg. If it is not there yet, steam another 2–3 minutes and look again. Where there is chicken, make sure it is cooked through — 74°C / 165°F in the middle of a piece. Blanch the snow peas or the mitsuba separately for a few seconds so they stay bright, and scatter sliced green onion straight over the top.
A different filling for everyone
Small cups turn one bowl of egg mixture into a little menu. Keep one plain, put shiitake and mitsuba in the next, chicken in the one after that, crab sticks in the last — the same fun as temaki sushi, where everyone eats the same dish and no two are quite alike. They cook in about half the time of one large bowl, too.
For vegetarians who eat eggs, a kombu and shiitake dashi with vegetables underneath keeps the whole cup plant-based apart from the egg itself.
No steamer?
Stand a heatproof rack or a trivet in a deep pot with a lid, set the bowl or the cups on top, and pour water in below the rack so the containers stay above it. Cover, follow the same timings, and keep half an eye on the water so the pot never boils dry.
For next time
One egg with about 150 ml of dashi makes a single serving — or beat your eggs, look at how much you have, and pour in three times as much dashi. Once that stays in your head, you can make chawanmushi with whatever is in the refrigerator, without looking anything up.
