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Egg Foo Young

For decades, my in-laws owned a Chinese restaurant in the San Francisco Bay Area, serving up the Westernized dishes that many Americans know so well: pot stickers, chow mein, deep-fried wontons, sweet-and-sour pork. My husband grew up in the restaurant’s kitchen, and egg foo young was a childhood favorite.

I didn’t encounter egg foo young until after I met Henry in college and he took me to visit his family’s restaurant. But as soon as I took my first bite of these savory egg patties, I knew I had to have the recipe.

Egg foo young, which means “lotus flower egg,” is enduringly popular and infinitely flexible: one Japanese-Chinese variant called kani-tama is stuffed with crab meat, and in parts of Missouri, folks slather egg foo young with mayonnaise and sandwich it between slices of white bread. (It’s called a St. Paul sandwich, named after the Chinese-American inventor’s hometown in Minnesota.)

Not surprisingly, my version of egg foo young isn’t served with bread—but as a finishing touch, it can take a spicy squirt of Sriracha.

Notes

  • Naming and lineage: Egg foo young is the conventional English spelling; egg fu yung is an alternate Cantonese transliteration. The dish is Cantonese-rooted, while the brown-gravy restaurant presentation is a Chinese American form. This recipe develops that Chinese American presentation rather than treating it as a representative recipe for all Chinese regional cooking.

Makes 6 patties
Hands-on time: 30 minutes
Total time: 30 minutes

Get

  • 6 large eggs
  • ¼ cup coconut flour
  • 1 teaspoon Paleo-friendly fish sauce
  • Additional fish sauce or kosher salt, as needed after cooking a test patty
  • ½ teaspoon apple cider vinegar
  • 1 cup diced or shredded cooked filling, such as ham, bacon, chicken, pork, shrimp, or well-drained crab
  • 10 ounces frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed dry
  • 2 scallions, thinly sliced
  • 1 tablespoon minced fresh cilantro
  • ½ teaspoon baking soda
  • Freshly ground black pepper
  • Ghee, for frying
  • Chicken Gravy, for serving
  • Sriracha (optional)

Do This

  1. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, coconut flour, fish sauce, and apple cider vinegar until smooth and lump-free. Stir in the cooked filling, spinach, scallions, cilantro, and baking soda, and season with pepper to taste.
  2. Heat a little ghee in a skillet over medium heat. Cook a small spoonful of batter through, taste it, and adjust the remaining batter with additional fish sauce or kosher salt as needed. The required adjustment will depend in part on how salty the cooked meat is.
  3. Add enough ghee for frying and heat until shimmering. Scoop a quarter-cup of batter onto the skillet, and flatten with the back of a spoon until it’s about ½ inch in height. Let it cook undisturbed for 3 minutes, until golden brown. Using a spatula, carefully flip over the egg foo young, and fry for another 2 to 3 minutes or until cooked through.
  4. Transfer the patty to a wire rack, and repeat Step 3 to cook up the remaining pancakes. (If you have room in the skillet, you can fry up more than one at a time, but don’t overcrowd the patties.)
  5. Serve with Chicken Gravy and Sriracha, if desired.

Variations

  • Treat the filling as a flexible formula: use about 1 cup total so the patties remain bound and easy to turn. Keep meat and seafood in small pieces so the filling distributes evenly.
  • Ham and bacon both work well. Cook bacon before measuring, drain excess rendered fat, and expect it to contribute more salt than many other fillings.
  • For crab or shrimp, use cooked seafood and remove excess moisture before adding it to the batter. Crab produces a gentler, sweeter filling and may need a different final salt adjustment than bacon or ham.
  • Cooked chicken or pork can be used directly. Mild leftovers will usually need more seasoning than cured meat.
  • Vegetables can replace some or all of the meat. Cook watery vegetables such as mushrooms first and drain or evaporate their liquid; excess moisture can loosen the patties and dilute their flavor.
  • Combinations are welcome, but keep the total filling near 1 cup and use the test patty to correct seasoning before frying the full batch.
  • For an onion-forward comparison batch, use 5 ounces frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed dry, and add ½ cup finely diced onion. Sweat the onion in a little ghee until softened, then cool it and drain off any excess moisture before adding it to the batter. Keep the six eggs and 1 cup filling unchanged for this test.