Kwek Kwek
This is a popular street food sold in the Philippines, and essentially is battered quail eggs that are fried and served with a dipping sauce. Sounds good to me, on my make and taste list. This recipe assumes you already have hard boiled quail eggs, peeled, available to use. There is a Shortcut in the Notes section on how to hard boil quail eggs if you are not familiar with that. You can also use canned quail eggs that are drained.
Ingredients
- 12 hard boiled quail eggs, peeled, Shortcut
- ¼ cup all purpose flour
- cooking oil, your choice, as needed, for frying
For the Batter
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- ¾ cup warm water
- 1 tablespoon annatto powder
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
For the Dipping Sauce
- ¼ cup rice vinegar
- ¼ cup brown sugar, packed
- ¼ cup tomato ketchup
- 2 teaspoons soy sauce
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
Instructions
First, the Dipping Sauce
- In a small saucepan, add all the Dipping Sauce ingredients and set on medium heat, stirring the sauce until the sugar completely dissolves. Remove the pan from the heat and set aside.
Next, the Batter
- In a mixing bowl, add the warm water and annatto powder and whisk until the powder is dissolved. Now if you do not have annatto powder, a few drops of orange food coloring will work just as good, although annatto will add a slight hint of flavor to the batter. The annatto or orange food coloring is basically a visual thing to make the batter orange, it can be left out if you prefer.
- Mix in the 1 cup of flour and baking powder into the warm annatto water, whisk until there is no lumps. Set the batter aside.
Next, Frying the Quail Eggs
- Heat about 1 inch of cooking oil in a pan to about 180° C (350° F) but not smoking, if no thermometer, just drop a small amount of batter into the oil when you think it is hot, the batter will sizzle and fry up nicely when the oil is hot.
- Take the peeled hard boiled quail eggs, or canned eggs, and drain well. To a shallow dish, add the 1/4 of flour, roll the eggs in the flour to completely coat the eggs.
- Now take the eggs and coat them with batter, ensuring the batter covers each egg completely.
- Add to the hot oil, 4 to 6 eggs at a time, turn them if needed and fry to golden brown (orange really) and crispy, remove to paper towels to drain, and repeat with the rest of the eggs.
- The sauce should be cooled a bit but still warm, pour that in a small dish, add the eggs to a serving plate and place the sauce bowl on the plate. Serve and enjoy.
Notes
Low cost per serving.
Shortcut: Perfect Hard Boiled Quail Eggs.
Variants. 1. Add ½ teaspoon of chicken stock powder to the batter. 2. Add ¼ teaspoon of garlic powder to the batter. 3. Add 1 chicken egg, beaten, to the batter. 4. Use chicken eggs, then the name becomes tokneneng.
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