Clam & Steamed Egg Custard (Ge Li Zheng Dan)
Steamed egg custard with clams nested inside — the silkiest thing you will make all year.
The story
Take the silkiest Cantonese steamed egg and nest clams into it as it sets: the clams open into the custard, their brine seasoning the whole dish from inside. It looks like a restaurant and behaves like a weeknight.
Ingredients (6 + pantry staples)
- Eggs — 3
- Clams, scrubbed — 12
- Warm water — 1.5 cups / 350 ml
- Soy sauce — 1 tbsp
- Toasted sesame oil — 1 tsp
- Scallions — 1, sliced
Pantry staples used (don't count toward the 6): salt, white pepper. Not stocked yet? See the pantry page.
Steps
- Simmer clams in 1 inch of water until they open (4–5 minutes); keep the clam liquor and strain it.
- Beat eggs with salt; add warm water plus the strained clam liquor (total liquid = 1.5× egg volume). Strain into a dish with the clams nested in.
- Cover; steam over gentle heat 10–12 minutes until just set. Soy, sesame oil, scallions.
Swaps
No clams? The plain custard (see our Steamed Egg Custard) is the base recipe; shrimp or minced pork are the other nests.
More 30-minute dishes
Chaoshan Daikon & Pork Soup (Chao Shan Qing Tang)
The soup this whole site was built around: a whole chunk of pork and a daikon, half an hour, then celery and salt. That is the recipe.
Steamed Fish with Ginger & Soy (Qing Zheng Yu)
The Cantonese gold standard of "let the fish be fish" — steam 10 minutes, smother in hot oil and soy.
Corn, Carrot & Pork Soup (Yu Mi Hu Luo Bo Tang)
The sweetest soup in the Chinese canon — corn does all the flavor work while you do nothing.