How To Prepare A Century Egg "Pei Dan"

Welcome to my first "How To" post. Since I was talking about cooking Logong's fave "Pei Dan Jok" or Century Egg Pork Porridge, I thought it'd be most useful to have a detailed posting on how to handle this strange-looking egg. You will be interested to know in one episode of the American "Fear Factor" they made the contestants eat this "100 year-old egg"! If only I had participated in that contest haha!

When you buy a century egg from the market, this is how the "pei dan" looks like:

It looks like an egg that has been packed with brown mud and saw dust / rice husks! It's made from duck's egg if I am not wrong, and preserved using what I do not know! I will "Google" it when I have the time hehe!

Anyway I hate getting my hands dirty, so I like to remove the mud surrounding the egg by using the plastic wrap (that comes with the egg) or a plastic bag! Just hold the egg with both hands, and use the thumbs to just push or scrape the mud off the egg, whichever works best. Here's how:

Use both thumbs!

You do not need to remove 100% of the mud; you can wash off whatever remains and it should be clean enough like this:

Proceed to peel off the shell like you would a hard-boiled egg. Be gentle, but it's not as fragile as a raw chicken's egg. Here's how a peeled century egg looks like:

See the snowflakes-like crystals in the egg? This is a very well-preserved egg! And if the yolk looks watery like this, this shows it's an even better century egg! I was lucky mom got such a nice fresh egg for me! :D

People would cut it into wedges lengthwise, and serve raw with pickled ginger as an appetiser (super yummy!) For cooking my porridge, I dice it into smaller pieces like so:

This is ready to go right into the porridge and you could eat this raw, so there's no need to overcook the century egg or it will melt!

Now this century egg is not so scary to prepare or eat, is it? :)